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COUNT MAGGI'S 1000 MILE DREAM by Peter Miller
" To me, the Mille Miglia was the finest road race of them all. But although I loved it, I was always afraid because of the very high speeds." Stirling Moss.
During its thirty-year existence from 1927 to 1957, Count Maggi's Mille Miglia was considered to be the world's finest motor race. It was a circus, it was spectacle and it was a tough, unforgiving challenge over 1000 miles, through Italian cities, villages and countryside - always starting and finishing at Brescia in the centre of the Lombard plain.
It was the most competitive road race ever run and, by the mid 1950s, at times cars were approaching 190mph. In 1955 when Stirling Moss won, 521 cars started from the wooden ramps in Brescia's Viale Rebuffone and only 281 returned. The winning Mercedes-Benz 300SLR of Moss and his navigator, Denis 'Jenks' Jenkinson, completed the course in the unbroken record time of 10 hours and 07 minutes and 48 seconds, averaging approximately 99 mph for the 1000 miles. Count Maggi's Mille Miglia produced thrilling triumphs and glorious, but bitter, defeats. Most of all it created heroes. To win at Brescia was to have reached the pinnacle of sporting achievement. " No driver could ever say that he had earned his victor's laurels if he had not won at Brescia", said Enzo Ferrari.
- Some people say that everyone has a spot of 'luck'
a few timed in their lives and I believe that mine was being a tank
commander in Italy in 1947 and saw the first post-war race from beside
the road. I was fascinated and enthralled and have lived and breathed
the Mille Miglia ever since. Not personally because of the cars, but
because of Count Maggi who dreamt up this wonderful event, which produced
heroes and gallant losers. Count Maggi died in 1961 a broken man at
the loss of his beloved race and those 30 historic years.
- Finally, I say modestly that the book has now become
a cult-collectors item with rave reviews and the most generous of all
was that of my dear friend 'Jenks' Jenkinson who won the race in 1955
with Stirling Moss at nearly 99 mph and as a guest writer in Autocar
said, "This is a book I should have written myself".
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- Out now!
- See Also: Future
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