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"Between 1927 and 1957, the Mille Miglia, a nonstop, 1000-mile road race from Brescia to Rome and back, hosted the world&amp;#039;s best drivers and fastest cars in an event that regularly took the lives of participants and spectators. Twenty years after it was canceled, the Mille was relaunched as a vintage car rally run over three days each May on the original route. This year, Larry Webster joined Porsche Sales and Marketing Chief Bernhard Maier in one of the 550 Spyders that dominated the 1950s Lightweight class. It would not be an Italian pleasure cruise. Speed, because it&amp;#039;s better than slow. |The woman riding in the car ahead must be on a triple dose of Valium. We&amp;#039;re somewhere south of Ferrara, driving on the clogged two lanes between towns. Directly in front is a right-hand-drive Austin-Healey 3000. The driver and passenger are wearing vintage goggles, their torsos poking tall from the roadster&amp;#039;s cockpit. And oh, yeah, it&amp;#039;s raining, and the water spray has pretty much blinded anyone in an open car. While the roads of the Mille are nominally only two lanes wide, its participants have, over the years, developed what&amp;#039;s known as the &amp;quot;Mille lane,&amp;quot; an unofficial right-of-way that cuts straight down the middle. Since there&amp;#039;s really not enough room for three lanes, going down the center forces oncoming traffic to veer sharply to the side. But once you&amp;#039;ve gained the Mille lane, all other drivers seem to understand and give way. The hard part is that first leap to establish the position, which the Healey tries repeatedly before cutting back each time to avert disaster. Since the woman in the passenger&amp;#039;s seat is on the left, she&amp;#039;s in the bull&amp;#039;s-eye for this game of chicken. PHOTOS: London to Brighton Veteran car rally The insanity of all this? There&amp;#039;s no need for it. The Mille&amp;#039;s three-day format follows a prescribed route with checkpoints that drivers must reach at specified times. If you&amp;#039;re either late or early, you&amp;#039;re assigned points; the driver with the fewest points wins. While this keeps speeds reasonable in theory, in practice, everyone drives like mad. And who can blame them? The police sometimes provide high-speed escorts, and endless crowds encourage the pace. Plus, as everyone knows, speed is its own drug. In truth, nearly every car arrives at the checkpoints early and simply waits until the time to go through, which makes for spontaneous car shows. Most of the 375 machines in the rally are one-of-a-kind machines, usually only seen in museums. But here, the cars are streaked with dirt, their exhausts blackened with soot\u2014the way they&amp;#039;re meant to be seen. The drivers, especially the ones in open cars, wear expressions of fatigue beaten back with adrenaline. Bragging rights may be the only thing at stake here, but you&amp;#039;d never know by the look of our traveling band, basking in the type of glory you don&amp;#039;t often see in modern motorsport.  Airbags not included. |Bernhard Maier is a madman. On every stretch of Italian switchbacks, around every corner, through every village, he&amp;#039;s on it, hammering the precious, antique 550 with obvious glee and no apparent mechanical sympathy. I&amp;#039;m riding shotgun, the ostensible navigator. If I wasn&amp;#039;t on the verge of soiling my pants, I&amp;#039;d be impressed. The guy&amp;#039;s good. Maier isn&amp;#039;t just skilled behind the wheel. Unlike most humans, he doesn&amp;#039;t seem to require sleep. After hours in the car, raindrops pelting our faces like miniature spears, our heads punching bags for the turbulence, I look for the small mistakes that would suggest fatigue has dulled his acumen. This is purely in the name of self-preservation. Except for new tires, the 550 is exactly as it was when it first raced in 1954\u2014no top, no belts, and only thin aluminum bodywork. In the event of an accident, you hope the impact pitches you clear of the carnage, the dubious &amp;quot;thrown clear&amp;quot; survival strategy. No matter Maier&amp;#039;s skill or stamina, one mistake by the careless, and we&amp;#039;ll be creamed. PHOTOS: Rally for the Lane On a set of switchbacks outside Rome, my own weariness finally takes its toll. It&amp;#039;s well past midnight, the asphalt glistening from the incessant, soaking rain and the occasional streetlight. The dim glow of the car&amp;#039;s tiny, low headlights is hopelessly incapable of illuminating street signs or the little &amp;quot;1000 Miglia&amp;quot; markers that line our route. The first indication that I&amp;#039;ve gotten us lost is that the spectators, previously a constant presence, are gone. I have a phone and flashlight, but I can&amp;#039;t read the Italian map. My phone is dead. Maier mutters something in German that almost certainly translates to &amp;quot;idiot.&amp;quot; He makes a call, and one of the white Cayennes following at a distance sweeps in and guides us to the city. We idle through streets thick with cheering onlookers, finally gliding into one of Rome&amp;#039;s breathtaking squares.  The unknown glory. |Nerveless drivers and navigators be damned: The real heroes of the Mille are the mechanics. When Maier and I are through driving for the night\u2014past two in the morning both days\u2014we collapse for a few hours of sleep. That&amp;#039;s when the mechanics go to work. Porsche has brought a small army to support three vintage cars\u2014two 550s and a 356. The crew leapfrogs the route in identical white Cayenne diesels, each outfitted with custom tool cabinets bolted into its cargo hold. The 550 whisperer is a man named Walter Layer. Somewhere outside Monterosi, Maier wedges his phone into his helmet and barks a few words in German. Two minutes later, a Cayenne slides behind us. The Spyder&amp;#039;s engine is misfiring. It&amp;#039;s faint\u2014I never heard it\u2014but to be safe, Layer rides with Maier, I hop in the Cayenne, and we blast down a two-lane, the edges crowded with people. PHOTOS: Five generations of historic Nissan GT-R&amp;#039;s Adrien Heinrich, a 22-year-old wrench, is behind the wheel. When Maier takes off, quickly distancing himself, Heinrich whips the truck to 110 mph, almost clipping the bystanders close enough to kiss the Cayenne&amp;#039;s mirrors. I want to tell him to slow down, but it&amp;#039;s moot. We&amp;#039;re mixed in with other competitors. Everyone&amp;#039;s flying. To bury the creeping suspicion that we&amp;#039;re going to kill someone, I ask what&amp;#039;s wrong with the 550. &amp;quot;I think it is with the sparks,&amp;quot; he says, shrugging. The truth is, he doesn&amp;#039;t know, and the guys who do know the old cars, like Layer, are becoming scarce. Layer changes the ignition coils, but the problem will reappear. At the end of the second day, when we reach Rome, all the cars are parked in an underground garage. It&amp;#039;s a nasty place, the air so thick with unfiltered exhaust that I can barely breathe. Half the cars are undergoing some type of repair. The quiet is occasionally punctuated by a revving engine or the sound of a wrench falling on concrete. The scene reminds me of Mille period photos, when the race cars were fixed in barns or driveways and weren&amp;#039;t coveted as seven-figure investments. It makes for an intoxicating cocktail\u2014not to mention an OSHA inspector&amp;#039;s worst nightmare.  Porsche&amp;#039;s first supercar. |&amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re done,&amp;quot; Maier says, sawing the wheel back and forth. It&amp;#039;s the last day of the Mille, and we&amp;#039;re in Greve, about midway between Rome and Brescia. We&amp;#039;ve just drilled a protruding manhole cover, and despite Maier&amp;#039;s movements, the 550 keeps going straight. We wait for the mechanics at the lunch stop, where the sun finally appears and a huge crowd mills about. You can almost hear jaws drop as former F1 driver David Coulthard rumbles through in a 1955 Mercedes 300 SLR, the sister to the car in which Stirling Moss set the Mille record\u2014a 98-mph average over 10 hours, 7 minutes, and 48 seconds\u2014in 1955. Few, however, know the significance of our little Porsche. Our wounded 550 wears chassis plate number 550-04, signifying that it was the fourth Spyder built. Conceived for the 1.5-liter racing class of the 1950s, the 550 was the first mid-engined Porsche as well as the company&amp;#039;s first series-production racing car. Ours was only the second 550 to house Porsche&amp;#039;s twin-cam 1.5-liter flat-four, known colloquially as a Fuhrmann four-cam, after its designer and the two cams on each side of the engine. It&amp;#039;s a roughly 120-hp powerplant that rivals today&amp;#039;s best engines in terms of power density. Around 90 550s were built between 1953 and 1956. While each is worth several million dollars today, Spyders originally sold for about $6000. They usually won their class in any race they finished and sometimes beat cars with engines three times larger. Our car finished third overall and first in class in the 1954 Carrera Panamericana, just under two hours behind the winning Ferrari 375 and its 4.5-liter V12. I&amp;#039;d long known the 550&amp;#039;s story, but I&amp;#039;d never realized the car&amp;#039;s genius until I watched mechanics take one to pieces. You see the obvious discipline required to keep the car so tiny. It barely rises above the knee, is just over a foot shorter than a Miata, and weighs about half a ton. On jack stands, with the wheels off, the attention to detail is remarkable: the welded aluminum panels that close off the wheel wells to reduce drag, the carefully-drilled and finned brake drums. The 550&amp;#039;s simplicity is an illusion; it&amp;#039;s one of the best-engineered cars of the era. That manhole cover broke a bracket securing the steering gear to the frame. They need a machine shop to fix it, and because it&amp;#039;s a Saturday, almost everything is closed. But as I&amp;#039;m about to leave for the finish with our photographer, miracle of miracles, the car is fixed. We hop on the highway for the blast to the finish. With little to do, I suddenly notice ink pen lines on the door, which I realize I accidentally scrawled while marking the route book. They won&amp;#039;t rub off. At the next stop, I confess to Achim Stejskal, the head of the Porsche museum, that I&amp;#039;ve left some graffiti, apologizing. &amp;quot;Oh, Larry,&amp;quot; he laughs, in his huge booming voice, &amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s okay. That&amp;#039;s patina!&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;ve left my mark. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a5849/its-a-mad-mad-mad-mad-mille-65-5-roa0114/>