Mille Miglia

The route ran from Brescia to Rome and back, a figure-eight course of roughly 1,500 km — approximately one thousand Roman miles. Entry in the original race was restricted to unmodified production cars, with the entrance fee set at a nominal 1 lira. In the early days winners needed 16 hours or more. From 1949, cars were assigned numbers according to their start time — for example, the 1955 Moss/Jenkinson car, #722, left Brescia at 07:22. Smaller, slower, lower-displacement cars started first, minimising the period roads had to be closed.

The first race started on 26 March 1927 with seventy-seven starters — all Italian — of which fifty-one reached the finish at Brescia. The inaugural course covered 1,618 km. Giuseppe Morandi won in a 2-litre OM-produced car, completing the course in just under 21 hours 5 minutes, averaging nearly 78 km/h (48 mph); Brescia-based Officine Meccaniche (OM) swept the top three places.

Tazio Nuvolari won the 1930 Mille Miglia in an Alfa Romeo 6C. Having started after his teammate and rival Achille Varzi, Nuvolari tailed Varzi with his headlights off so as not to be visible in Varzi's rear-view mirrors, then overtook him on the straight roads approaching Brescia and flicked his headlights on.

In 1931, German driver Rudolf Caracciola and riding mechanic Wilhelm Sebastian won with a supercharged Mercedes-Benz SSKL, averaging more than 100 km/h (63 mph) for the first time in the race's history. Caracciola had received little factory support due to the economic crisis.

The 1938 race ended in catastrophe: a Lancia Aprilia driven by Angelo Mignanego and Dr. Luigi Bruzzo crashed into a crowd near Bologna, killing ten spectators — seven of them children — and injuring 26. Further accidents in Ferrara and Rovigo caused additional deaths. The uproar reached Benito Mussolini, who suspended the race. In 1939 the "Litoranea Libica 1939" was held in Libya instead, won by Mussolini's personal chauffeur Ercole Boratto. When the race resumed in April 1940, it was dubbed the "Grand Prix of Brescia" and run on a 100 km triangular circuit in northern Italy between Brescia, Cremona, and Mantova, lapped nine times. That 1940 event saw the debut of Enzo Ferrari's first marque, AAC (Auto Avio Costruzioni), with the Tipo 815. The aerodynamically-improved BMW 328, driven by Huschke von Hanstein and Walter Bäumer, won with an all-time high average of 166 km/h (103 mph).

Three of the original organisers (Franco Mazzotti had been killed in the war) revived the race in 1947. Despite post-war rationing, the Italian government provided enough gasoline and Pirelli offered four free tires per registered car. The 1947 course was the longest of all Mille Miglia routes at 1,132 mi (1,822 km).

Mercedes-Benz made an effort in 1952 with the 300 SL Gullwing, scoring second with Karl Kling and Hans Klenk — who would later that year win the Carrera Panamericana. Caracciola, in a comeback attempt, finished fourth.

In 1955, Mercedes made a decisive attempt at winning the Mille Miglia with the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR, based on the Formula One car (Mercedes-Benz W196). Stirling Moss and his navigator, motor race journalist Denis Jenkinson, completed six reconnaissance laps beforehand, enabling "Jenks" to produce pace notes on a scroll of paper 18 ft (540 cm) long, which he read to Moss during the race via a coded system of 15 hand signals. Car #704 with Hans Herrmann and Hermann Eger was the fastest in the early stages; Herrmann had had a remarkable escape in 1954 when a railway crossing gate was lowered at the last moment and he and navigator Herbert Linge ducked beneath it in their low Porsche 550 Spyder. In 1955, Herrmann had to abandon after a brake failure on the Futa Pass, while Karl Kling crashed just outside Rome.

Juan Manuel Fangio (#658) preferred to drive alone, as he considered open road races dangerous. After 10 hours, 7 minutes, and 48 seconds, Moss and Jenkinson arrived in Brescia in their #722 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR, setting the event record at an average of 157.650 km/h (97.96 mph) — the fastest ever on that 1,597 km (992 mi) variant of the course, unbeaten in the remaining two years of the race. Fangio arrived a few minutes later on the road, but had started 24 minutes earlier and experienced engine problems at Pescara and a broken fuel injection pipe by Florence, ultimately running on seven cylinders.

Over its 30-year history the race claimed a total of 56 fatalities — 24 drivers and co-drivers, and 32 spectators. More than half the 1950s fatalities occurred on the fastest first 200 miles of the circuit between Brescia and Ravenna.

The race was permanently ended after the 1957 edition. Spanish driver Alfonso de Portago and American co-driver Edmund Nelson were killed when their factory-entered 4.0-litre Ferrari 335 S crashed at the village of Guidizzolo; nine spectators also died, five of them children. The crash was caused by a worn tire striking the sharp edge of a cat's eye in the road. De Portago had been called in as a last-minute replacement and was already unsettled by a race he felt was too dangerous. A second fatal crash took the life of Dutch driver Joseph Göttgens at Florence, in a Triumph TR3 in heavy rain.

From 1958 to 1961 the race continued as a rally-like event with timed special stages at racing speed, then was permanently discontinued after 1961.

Since 1977 the Mille Miglia has been reborn as the Mille Miglia Storica, a regularity race for classic and vintage cars. Participation is limited to pre-1957 cars that attended or were registered for the original race, following a Brescia–Rome round trip similar to the original. The event also spawned the 2007 documentary film Mille Miglia – The Spirit of a Legend.

Since November 2004, the former Monastery of Sant'Eufemia in Brescia houses the Mille Miglia Museum, illustrating the race's history with films, memorabilia, posters, and classic cars. The trademark for the Mille Miglia logo is owned by the Automobile Club Brescia.

This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.