1000 Miglia 2008

About the Event

Take a James Bond girl, a double Formula One World Champion, the mayor of Moscow, a fashion mogul, and the boss of Europe’s biggest car manufacturer, season with a handful of international businessmen and sprinkle with a few politicians, stir in 375 of the most sensational vintage racecars in the world, and what have you got? The 2008 Mille Miglia Storica, of course.

It’s more a happening that has become show business on wheels and less a serious race against the clock!.. Millions lined the route of the 81st Mille Miglia in various states of excitement, keen to watch the spectacular old cars rumble by. But they were equally keen on star gazing, trying to recognize the many famous faces this remarkable event attracts.

A parade of grumbling, growling, gurgling old timers that had set the hearts of millions racing from 1927 until 1957, sped from Brescia to Rome and back, manhandled by some of the greatest racing drivers the world has ever known. Today’s Mille Miglia is a historic one, in which the well-to-do drive the race’s old veterans at a fairly sedate pace over one of the old routes of the most beautiful race in the world, as Enzo Ferrari once called the Mille Miglia. And he should know. Cars bearing his name won it eight times between 1947 and 1957, not to mention the many prewar victories of his Scuderia Ferrari Alfa Romeos.

The Mille Miglia Storica is no longer a race of speed but of regularity, for which its drivers use all sorts of satellite exotica to ensure they arrive at the 49 checkpoints on the dot, not a tenth of a second too early, nor a tenth too late.

Most liked pictures of the event