90 years after the first victory at the Mille Miglia, Alfa Romeo returns in 2018 as official automotive partner and guest of honor. In 1928, Giuseppe Campari won the famous "1000-mile race" in the Alfa Romeo 6C 1500 Super Sport, which is now held as a classic car rally. Next year, Alfa Romeo will once again be sending classic cars from the factory museum to the starting line. Thirty vehicles, including Alfa Romeo Giulia and Alfa Romeo Stelvio, in action for the organizer.
Between 1927 and 1957, the Mille Miglia was one of the most demanding long-distance races in the world, at times even as a round of the World Championship. In 1983, the Mille Miglia, "the most beautiful race in the world" for the great Enzo Ferrari (1898 - 1988), was revived as a classic car rally. At the 36th edition in May 2018, Alfa Romeo will be at the start as the organizer's official automotive partner. Exactly 90 years after the first victory, Alfa Romeo is also the guest of honor of the "1000 Miles", which today, as then, leads from Brescia in northern Italy to Rome and back. However, the more than 300 participants no longer have to complete the approximately 1,600-kilometer route non-stop, but split into four daily stages.
With eleven victories in the original Mille Miglia - seven of them in a row - Alfa Romeo holds the record. The first was achieved by Italian Grand Prix star Giuseppe Campari and co-driver Giulia Ramponi in 1928 in an Alfa Romeo 6C 1500 Sport. The masterpiece of the ingenious engineer Vittorio Jano was technically far ahead of its time, for example with supercharging by means of a compressor and the cylinder head welded to the engine block. Campari/Ramponi completed the 1,618-kilometre route that year at an average speed of 84 km/h - an incredible achievement at the end of the 1920s.
To mark the 90th anniversary of this victory, Alfa Romeo is taking part in the Mille Miglia 2018 with a whole series of special activities. FCA Heritage, the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) brand responsible for the history of Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Fiat and Abarth, will be at the start of the regularity rally with legendary classic cars. In addition, the organizer will be using thirty current vehicles, including the Alfa Romeo Stelvio and Alfa Romeo Giulia, for organizational tasks. With this commitment, Alfa Romeo is building a bridge between the past and present of its own brand.
The classic cars competing in the 2018 Mille Miglia demonstrate how success on the racetrack shapes a brand's image. They also illustrate the influence that consistent involvement in motorsport has on the development of production vehicle technology. The most recent example is the Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio, which has just set a new lap record for SUVs on the legendary Nordschleife of the Nürburgring. With a time of 7.51.7 minutes, Alfa Romeo test driver Fabio Francia improved the existing best time by around eight seconds. The Italian had previously set a new Nordschleife record for four-door production saloons - with the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio. The stopwatches stopped at 7:32.1 minutes.
Incidentally, the Quadrifoglio part of the name refers to a legendary lucky charm of Alfa Romeo, the four-leaf clover, Quadrifoglio in Italian. The Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio and Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio thus continue the tradition established, among other things, by their victory in the 1928 Mille Miglia.
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