When it comes to road races, few have the allure of Italy’s legendary Mille Miglia, and it’s hard to think of a better car in which to drive the route than the Lamborghini Murcielago Roadster.
The Greatest Drives on Earth: Mille Miglia: by Richard Bremner, with photography by Barry Hayden
It's almost impossible to imagine how differently the Mille Miglia would have been viewed if you'd been an Italian watching it tear through your village in the early 1930s. And not just because the race was for real back then, rather than today's excitingly indulgent time-trial nostalgia-fest.
To a 1930s farm worker, digging a living from a patch of land, the race would very probably have been the most exciting spectacle of the year, a torrent of noisy colour rocketing tomorrow's world to their doorsteps. It was a chance to see heroic men battling ferocious machines and for some, perhaps, a symbol of freedom - not only from the drudgery of the land, but from fascism, for this was the era of Benito Mussolini's Italy.
The Mille Miglia was born because a group of men known as the four musketeers set about 'creating something absolutely sensational which will make the automobile world from its slumbers'. That was in December 1926, and what Giovanni Canestrini, Count Franco Mazzotti, Count Aymo Maggi and Renzo Castagneto dreamed up was an event called the Mille Miglia 1000-mile road race through some of the most beautiful scenery in Italy, its drama, colour, spectacle, noise and recklessness would electrify not only those competing, but it’s spectators, too.
'The world's most beautiful race' ran for 24 years - it halted during World War Two until the inevitable happened and a big accident caused multiple deaths. The Italian government banned it, and though there were attempts at reconfiguring it, the race died in the late '50s. Until it was revived, that is, in 1982. Today's annual Mille Miglia, eligible to any car that could have taken part in the original event, is not a race, though you could easily think otherwise when you see the participants ripping through the countryside. Along with Goodwood, Pebble Beach and the international motor shows of the world, it ranks as one of the motoring events.
And what has all this got to do with Lamborghini'? Not much, on the face of it, given that the company was born well after the Mille Miglia stopped, which means that even the oldest 1964 Lamborghini is seven years too young to take part. But there's a stronger link than you might think. When it comes to 'creating something absolutely sensational that will wake the automobile from its slumbers', Lamborghini has something of record. Not merely because Ferruccio Lamborghini actually succeeded in founding a company to rival Ferrari (motivated by the desire to snub Enzo Ferrari, whose slack attitude to after-sales service the Ferrari-owning Ferruccio resented), but with several of his cars. The first sensation was the 1966 Miura, the second the 1973 Countach both achieved nothing less than a redefinition of the supercar - and there are several lesser marvels such as the Espada and the LM002 off-roader. Though more conventional in supercar terms, today's Murcielago and Gallardo hardly fall short when it comes to visual sensation, either. Lamborghini has grown out of the same spirit that inspired the Mille Miglia.
Which is why we came to be collecting a brand-new Murcielago Roadster from the Sant'Agata factory one brisk spring morning. A MurcieIago would look dramatic even if it were grey on a grey day, but in orange under a brilliant blue sky it hijacks your attention like a firecracker at a funeral. The black hood and graphite-grey wheels make it look meaner than an angry bouncer, and if you still feel its presence falls short on the malevolent front, you can electrically raise the airscoops flanking the engine. Normally they rise automatically, to shovel cooling air into the maw of a hard-worked and hot 572bhp V12.
All of which makes you want to get in it. Press a finger on the front edge of the door handle to flick it free, grasp it, heave and the big door cantilevers skywards. From there it's a short, crouching drop into the seat. A slightly offset wheel, a full set of surprisingly sober instruments and an absolute constellation of warning lights - including an alarming one depicting the Murcielago at a 45-degree tilt to warn of rollover bar deployment failure - confront you in a cockpit that is beautifully crafted. You sit amid a mix of unwavering double-stitched leather - you wouldn't have seen that in Lamborghinis past - whose contrasting orange threads look terrific. It feels rich and workmanlike.
And, of course, you'll be wanting to remove the roof, for which you'll need a good 15 minutes. You'll be plucking at studs, peeling Velcro, unhooking rods and carbon spars and compressing them, folding, manoeuvring, tugging, jerking and - if things go badly, swearing and ripping knuckles. This roof isn't easy to remove, and re-assembling it is a memory test as much as a manual workout. You’ll master it with regular use, but beware cloudbursts.
The sky looks clear as we strike northwest fur Brescia and the start of the Mille Miglia, where we'll also visit the new Mille Miglia museum. From there we'll skirt Lake Garda before spearing south towards the legendary Futa and Raticosa passes, the kind of roads you dream of if you get behind the wheel of a Lambo.
BIG BULL
Even if you've driven a Lamborghini before - and I've had the privilege several times - it's impossible not to feel intimidated by its bulk and the feeling that it will be difficult to see out of. In fact, you can see ahead with ease, and with a paddle-shift transmission, driving it is go-kart simple - so there's no embarrassing stall as we leave the factory gates.
Apart from your proximity to the ground, what hits hardest is the noise. It doesn't take long to realise that the gnashings of the V12 are coming at us through a roof whose fabric is close to useless as a sound-deadener. It's a noise potent with promise, but it does undermine an otherwise comfortable car. You can pretty much get the seat where you want it - virtually impossible in the old Diablo - the major controls are to hand, the minor switches easy to pinion with a digit The ride is surprisingly pliant, too. The car follows the contours of the road pretty closely, but you're rarely jostled to distraction. So if the journey to Brescia is slightly frustrating - the only chance to even begin exercising this car is away from autostrada tollbooths, when the unfettered bellow of the V12 tempts you into a lunge at oblivion, it's still a real pleasure. A pleasure for others on the road, too, who regularly photograph it with their phones.
Later that afternoon we drive into the Piazza Loggia in Brescia, where the Mille Miglia will start next month. We think nothing of the fact that there's no traffic around much of this elegant square, park the Roadster up for a photo and watch the crowds grow exponentially around it, until a policeman asks whether we have a permit to park the car. Er, no. But he generously lets us finish as it dawns on us why the square is free of Pandas, Puntos and pedestrians.
Today there is no clue to the throng of classics that will soon overwhelm this town. We head out for Lake Garda among the sludging traffic. The MurcieIago is easier than you'd expect in this kind of traffic - as long as you remember that it gets wider behind you - though the gearshift is sometimes clunky at low speeds, mainly because the revs drop very abruptly over the last 500-1000rpm to idle, making it hard to avoid jerking progress.
Looking rearwards isn't so easy - a tiny trapezoid is your rear window, and much of it is filled with engine lid, which often means you have to crane to see even the rooftop: following cars. You'd never see an Elise.
You've got door mirrors, of course, but they are full of the swelling muscle of bodywork. Not very practical, but it's a Lamborghini kind of a view. And you can always out-accelerate whatever lurks behind you.
There's not much to out-accelerate am the lake bar bicycles, such is the traffic, but when the roads clear it's easy to imagine the pleasure of blasting about in the company of Alfas, Abarths, Lancias, Mercedes and Porsches. The urge to surge only intensifies when we visit the excellent Mille Miglia museum. Among the hundreds of exhibits, including some marvellously obscure machines such as Stanguellinis, is period car footage.
In one film the camera is strapped to the door of red car – frustratingly I can't identify it, but it must be from the ‘50s judging by the shape of its front wing - which is hurtling down a twisting pass. It’s probably not going that fast - not as fasts we will be going - but the combination of its lurching body-roll and the violent switchbacks of the road almost has me car-sick.
The car's battle to constrain itself is one persistent image - the other is the relentlessness of the road's contortionism and the flashing beauty of the landscape. Watch this footage and you'll be aching to have a go Raticosa passes, which the museum staff tell us are among the highlight drives of the event.
So we hurry south again, using autostradas because we want to get to the Futa and Raticosa passes, which the museum staff tell us are among the highlight drives of the event.
Truth be told - and I almost feel guilty writing this, given the excellence of the Murcielago in other departments - the engine's din is getting to us, and I find myself vowing that if I ever buy one (highly likely, of course) it will be the hard-top. Another reason is the sticker on the header rail instructing you not to exceed 200kmh (125mph). Why? Because if you do you may just see the Lambo's canopy flailing in the rear-view mirror. And that's at just 60 per cent of the Murcielago's top speed potential.
Such troubling thoughts will be banish when you reach one of the highlights of the Mille Miglia drive. There's scenery here oft verdant, mountainous kind, and a route that rises and falls as much as it twists. These, surely, are the roads we were seeing in those films. Peel off the roof, and you're going to feel more a part of it, intensifying the full, physical experience of this car, though it is not actually a particularly physical to drive. The biggest effort will be of concentration - this car is not small, and demands precision of the driver, especially on these tight roads. There are big forces to control. After a half-hour, high-speed burst along the Futa pass I feel as if
I've had a light - and exhilarating - workout. Mille Miglia combatants would have been keeping this up for hours at a stretch, and in machinery of wayward character.
But the task is eased by the MurcieIago's superb steering, a precision tool bundled with the kind of energised feel that is so rare in modem cars, and a set of carbonfibre stoppers, whose resilience, as we plunge towards valley floors through endless confections of twists, is mighty. Actually, they're overlight at lowspeeds – just like an Audi's, oddly- but that disappears when the going's rapid.
Though this is quite a big car, one of its most astonishing feats is not to feel it when you fling it at second- and third-gear hairpins, and it's impossible to resist the enjoyment of feeling this big brute of a car muscle its way through a bend as if it were a ballerina. Of course, the Murcielago understeers somewhat if it's launched hard into tight turns. But you can kick the tail around slightly even with the traction control on - an arrangement it's sensible to maintain when your run-off area is a rock-face or a rapid descent onto the switchback road 10m below. It's hard not to admire the bravery- recklessness, even - of those Mille Miglia combatants.
It was the failure of a tyre, indeed, that killed this race and stole the lives of Alfonso de Portago, who was driving, 10 spectators and his co-driver. That was in 1957, two years after the 1955 Le Mans crash that killed 55 people. Three days later, the government decreed the end of the Mille Miglia and all road races in Italy. But that ban could hardly kill the pleasure of driving an athletic car hard along a picturesque road, nor the pleasure of seeing spectacular machines streaming through dramatic scenery.
It's why beautiful, fast and physical cars, cars like Lamborghinis, are built and bought today. The Murcielago Roadster, though able on a scale beyond the wildest imaginings of a 1930s racer, captures that same spirit, in small part because it supplies similar inconveniences with its soft roof. The Mille Miglia was an A to A event - it ran from Brescia to Brescia and the Roadster will likely be used as an A to A car, a car that like this race, is all about glorious indulgence.