Mille Miglia 2017: What to look out for

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It’s just a week now before the Mille Miglia will colour the roads between Brescia and Rome, so why not have a look at the list of entrants? Provisional, or so the official website states, but it shouldn’t make too much of a difference from the actual starting grid we reckon. Have a look for yourself here (large PDF file alert). The first 150 or so cars are pre wars, so we won’t discuss these here, but from there on there are still hundreds of exotics left. Or are there?

Yes and no. We’ve seen an edition that was packed with TR3s and VW Beetles in the back of the field, but for this year there are just a few: 3 TR3s and 2 TR2s plus just one Beetle to be precise. More surprising is perhaps the fact that only 4 DB2s are entered, while we remember this was a very popular choice just some years ago. And Jaguars then? Oh – there are plenty of those, even though the official Jaguar Heritage team apparently decided not to go this year. A team of JD Classics fills the gap with plenty of XKs though. The grand total of XK120s and XK140s is 19 – quite a few. Not as many as the Mercedes 300 SLs though, which are a real common sight in the Mille Miglia. 23 of them have been entered, the majority of them by Mercedes-Benz of Stuttgart.

Seven Porsches 550 Spyder are also a bit of an overkill, but gone is also the multitude of Healey Silverstones we saw in recent years. Some very interesting Healeys are bound to come instead though: a Healey Duncan, a Healey Westland and a Nash-Healey. Surprising for 2017 is a huge amount of Cisitalia 202s: 11 of them no less plus two 204s as above! And then there are a few real surprises to find on this fascinating grid: a Bentley MkVII Special of 1948 (how on earth did that come through?), but also a Bugatti 101C (this one?), a Jaguar-powered HW Alta, a Cadillac-powered HWM and… the no doubt very noisy Kurtis 500X Caballo II. Eat your heart out Italians!

(Words Jeroen Booij, picture courtesy Foto Lochhi - Cisitalia Abarth 204A of 1950)

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