BBC "The Real Italian Job: James Martin’s Mille Miglia"

I doubt that I am the only club member who felt obliged to watch ‘The Real Italian Job: James Martin’s Mille Miglia’, and watch it to the bitter end, even after it became obvious that the programme was a ‘stinker’. Following the ever inventive ‘Top Gear’, a show that even the wife watches, the Mille Miglia programme was heavily plugged in trailers and the ‘Radio Times’. It turned out to be just the sort of programme that club motor sport can do without.

The programme’s main preoccupation was impress the viewer with the expense involved in participating in this ‘amateur’ event, we were repeatedly told that James Martin’s Maserati, a sort of old Italian Lotus 7 with a pretty body, cost something approaching a million pounds. Despite this expense, after running for only a few hundred slow kilometres, surrounded by camera cars and camera motorcycles, the car expired with an expensive engine failure. So much for the expensive rebuild.

The event is oversubscribed and is able to charge an £8000 entry fee! (I hope that nobody has told the MSA!) In the ‘Radio Times’, James Martin describes the Mille Miglia as “aimed at the serious petrol-head. It’s not the Gumball Rally, which is rich kids wasting money’.

Sorry................

The programme insisted on misrepresenting what is essentially a reliability trial as a dangerous race. True, more than half a century ago the Mille Miglia was a race for the brave and foolhardy. When the race was originally envisaged in the 1930s the organisers were a little surprised that the idea was accepted because town to town (or city to city) road races had been abandoned in the first decade of the 20th century, as the death toll amongst the spectators was unacceptable. The surprise was that as a true race the Mille Miglia reappeared after the second world war and survived until 1957, when De Portago’s Ferrari burst a tyre at about 170mph and ran into a group of spectators. The revival, run amongst modern traffic and very popular with spectators, has to satisfy modern standards of safety.

The programme disappointed those interested in the Mille Miglia and/or old cars. Given the vast number of participants, with an incredibly diverse range of cars, it was disappointing to find the programme concentrating on a handful of entries. One oddity of the Mille Miglia was that as a handicap event some entered what many would consider completely inappropriate vehicles, in the background of one shot was a lowered Fiat Multipla, 600cc of people carrier. This must be one of the most inappropriate cars to race in recent times (if one ignores the Citroen 2CV and Reliant three wheeler).

My wife expressed sympathy for James Martin’s lady, displaced from the passenger seat that she wished to occupy, for another lady clad in a racing suit, all to no obvious purpose other than generating a bit of ‘human interest’. One can also express sympathy for James Martin, if one ignores the publicity, most would consider the event a disaster .

As a travelog of the first third of the Mille Miglia course the programme was fine, One could view the centre of several italian medieval towns with the anticipated background music from italian grand opera, and all conducted at a granny’s shopping car pace so there was time to appreciate the architecture.

Those wishing to see a car driven fast had to be satisfied with the Caterham R500 on ‘Top Gears’ track. Now that ‘Top Gear’ has prised the Stig out of overpriced, overweight supercars, they should put him into a club single seater to show everybody what real speed is. Unfortunately, this would further debunk the supercar myth and would probably not be politic as it would upset the manufacturers even more than the R500 has.

Patrick Huston

Asst ed's footnote:

Patrick and I have a degree of interest in the truth so here's an article about a 2004 auction of a Maser A6GCS

And here is a link to a list of Maseratti chassis numbers. Tab down to "Tipo A6 GCS / 2000 Sport". Turns out one was driven by Luigi "Gigi" Villoresi, Grand Prix driver of the day.

And finally an essay on the A6GCS.

Second Footnote:

Did James Martin get his just desserts?

Martin and companion

Sportscar and F1 driver Alfonso Portago bought a Ferrari 735 Sport Scaglietti and hand painted it black (which should endear him to some Mono folk). Shown at start of 1954 Mexican Road Race.(velocetoday.com)

Denis Jenkinson (left) showed in 1955 how to report a Mille Miglia. With Moss (right) he also showed how to win one.