The Targa Florio road race, and its native Sicilian champion Nino Vaccarella, were the subjects of one of the most memorable drive stories ever to appear in Autocar. It's genuis was a rare and brilliant combination of subject matter, personel, location and car; it was written by former European editor Peter Robinson, and titled The Sicilian.
Robinson travelled to Sicily in spring 1992, and met up with Targa legend Vaccarella for a lap of the twisting, 45-mile Piccolo Madonie course in an eye-catching Alfa Romeo SZ.
On their visit, Vaccarella showed our man the many treacherous corners, narrow straights and undulating hills where the history of this great race was played out. Robinson's story was published in Autocar & Motor on April 1 1992, and you can read it, in its entirety, below.
THE SICILIAN, by Peter Robinson
Contents: meeting the Targa Florio's native specialist; on 'the flying headmaster's' racing history; finding the Targa Florio; when Nino came unstuck; the most tiring race of them all.
Meeting the Targa Florio's native specialist
Even today, 15 years after he last raced around the circuit, Nino Vaccarella remembers every corner of the insanely tortuous 45-mile course that was the Targa Florio.
“Here, we can go fast,” he says as he drops down a gear and accelerates hard past a 50kmh sign and towards the blind right-hand hairpin. Beyond the guard rail there’s a hideous 160-metre drop, the road is narrow and craggy, pitching the Alfa SZ in two directions at once.
Nino is unconcerned. Sure enough, the corner opens up. The Alfa could have gone through at twice the speed. I ask the obvious question.
“Yes, I know every corner,” he says proudly, yet matter-of-factly. “I have driven the course a thousand times. Every tree, every stone, tells me whether a corner is narrow or wide, if it goes up or goes down. Every centimetre I know. How many corners? Five hundred, six hundred? I don’t know, it’s all corners.” He laughs.
Within a hundred metres Nino proves his claim. To me this corner looks absolutely identical to the last, the same crumbling stone wall on the inside, a cypress tree clinging to the edge of the road on the outside of the guard rail.
“This one is slow, no?” he asks, squeezing firmly on the brakes, shuffling wheel urgently, his hands remaining at twenty to four. The corner is tight, one hairpin followed immediately by another. It’s not a place to go quickly.
Except they did, of course, on the Targa Florio. This extraordinary race was begun by Vincent Florio in 1906 – 21 years before the first Mille Miglia. It endured as a round of the world sportscar championship until 1973, though the Sicilians persevered with it until 1977.
On roads more suited to rallying, brave men came to race their powerful and exotic P4 Ferraris, 908 Porsches and T33 Alfas – cars designed for the outright speed of Le Mans and Spa-Francorchamps – and somehow survived the almost unrelenting twists and turns of roads that began as donkey paths thousands of years ago.
They raced through a seemingly endless sequence of abrupt corners, weaving bends and zig-zagging hairpins. They flashed by olive groves, vines, market gardens and clumps of fig and eucalyptus trees, in the shadow of rugged, beautiful mountains that reach almost 2000 metres into the sky. They hurtled over roads creased and ravaged by seismic contortions, corkscrewing the car at every turn, while acting as a launch pad that could so easily hurl any swiftly driven racer into a stone wall. It’s tough, unforgiving and magic.
There is but one moment of respite, Buonfornello, a 2.7-mile straight that runs parallel to the coast between Campofelice and the Cerda station, just before the pits and the start-finish line. Here they could relax. At 210mph.
In two places the circuit opens out into a roller coaster, descending down one side of the steep valley and up the other, offering a panoramic view of six miles of circuit to the hundreds of thousands of spectators who lined the course one Sunday in May.
Oh, to have been one of them. To have sat on the hillside by a camp fire, eating olives and home-made salamis, drinking the local white wine, listening, waiting for the first car to arrive, must have been sheer bliss. The drivers swear they could smell the meat cooking, could hear the shouting above the engines. I doubt there has ever been a finer, more enjoyable place to watch a motor race.
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On 'the flying headmaster's' history
I well remember reading, 20 years ago, about ‘the flying headmaster’ from Palermo who, using his intimate knowledge and considerable driving skill, took on the best drivers in the world and beat them in his own backyard. His name became synonymous with Sicily’s great race. You heard about the Targa Florio and you thought about Nino Vaccarella.
And I remember photographs of signs painted on walls, on the road, on the houses. ‘Viva Nino’ and ‘Forza Nino’ they said, expressing the hunger for success of one of their own from a proud and generous people.
Nino Vaccarella, the once and still hero of Sicily – only World Cup soccer idol Toto Schillaci even approaches his popularity – is now the headmaster of a private school founded by his father in 1936. When he raced he was a teacher, a mild mannered, charming man who made the Targa his own race. He won it three times, from an amazing 16 starts, the first in 1957.
Vaccarella learned the roads as a young boy, travelling to visit his grandparents who lived in Petralia high in the hills just beyond the circuit. “My father would tell me, ‘this is the Targa Florio’,” he said, explaining his knowledge. “Then, when I was 16, I came to see the race in the train with friends. That year an Italian driver, Franco Cortese won in a Frazer Nash. I remember it was green.”
Though Jaguar and Aston Martin tried, this victory in 1951 was the only one by a British car in all the 61 Targa Florios.
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Finding the Targa Florio
So one day, early in March, I set off in the SZ with Nino to do a lap of the Piccolo Madonie circuit and bathe in the mystique of a unique and wonderful motor race.
To find the Targa Florio you drive 35 miles east from Palermo to Imera and join the SS 120 towards Cerda. After turning inland from the sea the road runs beside a railway line for a mile or so, then it forks and begins a gentle climb to the pits. Even these are actually on a corner, just to set the atmosphere for the whole event. Three generations of buildings line either side of the road. The new section is still used for the historic Targa meetings but the faded paint and old posters of the control tower tell of another era. The road splits here, following the separation of the pitlane and the track, both are still used.
There’s nothing more eerie than the calm of ancient unused motor racing pits. In the Floriopoli pits near Cerda the ghosts of Nazzaro, Nuvolari, Varzi, Taruffi and Musso linger in the cool, clear air. You know that Fangio, Moss, Gendebien, Brooks, Bonnier, Attwood, Mairesse and Hawkins all stalked this ground.
Vaccarella, who has been here so many times before, becomes wistful. “The Targa Florio was a beautiful page in the history of the Sicilian people. It brings back so many memories. Everyone knows everyone, even if they were opponents you met them in the hotels and pits, talked together, ate together. It was a closer world than that of today.”
From the pits the road winds up the hill to Cerda, a serpentine stretch of tarmac impeded by a town. The main street is long but narrow yet the fastest cars still reach 150mph here.
The road meets the horizon at Granza and plunges down the valley from Sclafani Bagni to Scillato. There’s a small monument to Count Masetti, twice winner of the Targa who rolled his Delage here in 1926 and was killed. Some insensitive road worker has painted the memorial in white, hiding the inscription. “So stupid, I don’t understand. This is our history,” says Vaccarella. “I shall tell them it must be fixed.”
A little further on Nino shows us the spot against a stone wall near Caltavuluro, where Brian Redman crashed his Porsche in 1971, the car catching fire and inflicting severe second degree burns to his face, neck and hands.
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When Nino came unstuck
Beyond Scillato the countryside is barren, stark, towns cling to cliff-faces, the road bucking and weaving across the mountain to Collesano – where Vaccarella is an honorary citizen – and the corner.
In 1967 Ferrari sent a 4.0-litre 450bhp P4 to Sicily for Nino in the hope that massive power would defeat the nimble Porsches. He was easily quickest in practise and half a million people lined the route in expectation of a Sicilian victory.
The Ferrari led by 90 seconds on the second lap. Down into Collesano he raced, through the corridor of people, waving to his fans. The 120-degree left-hander is sharp, slow and road is frighteningly narrow.
Did the wave mean lost concentration? Whatever, Nino lost it and bounced one front wheel and then the other against the wall, wrecking the rims and handing the race to Porsche. Moments before the crowds had been euphoric, now they were silent, distraught as if it were they who had crashed.
Today Nino says: “I arrived a bit too quickly, the brake pedal went down, the car skidded and I hit the curb. Ferrari told me, ‘next time don’t wave to the crowd’.” The following year, Vaccarella arrived to find ‘Attento Nino’ painted on the wall approaching the turn.
We found the Collesano corner almost unchanged since that disappointing day 25 years ago. Only the sign has faded.
Nino Arcara, the classic, enthusiastic Italian mechanic, still operates his garage on the outside of the corner below his home. It was Arcara who collected and stored the Ferrari and looked after Nino until the race was over.
Did he hear our SZ or did some second sense tell him Vaccarella had arrived? For no sooner had we stopped than Arcara rushed out to meet us, shaking hands with all in our party, greeting Nino like a hero. Nothing was too much trouble. We saw his racing Moto Guzzi bikes, his Porsche 911 and old Targa photographs. And left with arms full of the local oranges and lemons.
“When the people here realised there was a Sicilian capable of winning, they took him to their hearts,” Nino explained simply. “Until then they had always seen foreigners or Italians starring and winning. I felt an enormous warmth from the people but also an extra responsibility.”
“When I arrived it was something special. They drove with me. They shouted, ‘Nino, Nino! Vaccarella, Vaccarella!’ They spurred me on. To be regarded with such fondness is wonderful, no?”
All week we’d been parking the Alfa in guarded garages but here Nino said, “Leave it, leave the keys, it is safe.”
Surrounded by talking, laughing people who all wanted to shake hands, Nino took us to a bar to try the famed Sicilian canolli. So rich and delicious is this dessert of sweetened ricotta cheese that he can only eat a couple a year. Payment? Not for Vaccerella and his friends.
From Collesano the road gradually begins to open out, the corners begin to string together before Campolelice and the long run beside the sea.
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The most tiring race of them all
“Le Mans was not tiring {Nino won the 24-hour race in 1964], not compared with the Targa.” He shakes his arms, wobbles his head while recreating the brrrumm-brrrumm noises to demonstrate the constant gearchanges and body movements. “You were always turning, so when you came to Buonfornello you’d slump down into the seat [he sighs and slides his backside forward] and relax.”
To put the Targa Florio into perspective you should know that the short circuit was a mere 44-miles long, where once the race had been one 669-mile circuit of the entire island. There were Madonie circuits, the 92-mile Grande, 67-mile Medio and 44.64-mile Piccolo. In the later years the race was held over 11 laps – 491 miles – and Helmut Marko left the lap record at 79.52mph.
Nothing, except two world wars, could stop the Targa. In 1966 it snowed, so they delayed the start by an hour. But it became apparent that the cars had grown too fast and the spectators too suicidal to prevent a tragedy. The inevitable happened. In 1977 an Osella went into the crowd, killing four people and injuring seven others. It was the end of a magnificent event.
Nino Vaccarella would like to be remembered for more than just the Targa Florio. After all he won Le Mans, Spa and Daytona in sports cars and drove for Ferrari in the 1965 Italian Grand Prix. But so deified is Nino by his fellow Sicilians that even he realises that’s an impossibility.
Now there’s Giovanni Vaccarella, 19 years old and desperate to follow his father. Sadly there is no Targa Florio to take him on to glory.
On our Targa transport: Alfa Romeo's SZ
We raked up 2235 miles on our pilgrimage to Sicily in a hard-worked, two-year-old Alfa SZ borrowed from the factory. I can tell you it’s as irresistible as the Targa Florio. The important thing – despite styling so ugly it’s appealing – is that the SZ actually works well.
With the exception of a high-mounted accelerator pedal the driving position is terrific. The seats are comfortable, even after a 300-mile non-stop stretch. The handling is responsive and predictable, immediately ensnaring the driver.
The ride is firm, perhaps too firm for a long trip. “It’s very rigid for the road. I think it’s stiffer than my Ferrari 208GTB Turbo, but it feels very sporting,” Nino said.
We averaged close to 24mpg, impressive given the strong if not memorable performance that’s really no match for the aggressive styling. Cruising above 4000rpm the initially glorious yowl of the engine becomes a drone at constant speeds.
Production ceased in Zagato in December but there are still a few around. The Alfa dealer in Cefalu near Palermo has one and is keen to sell. If you can cope with the crowds it attracts, the SZ makes a tantalising companion.
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