Watch Chris Harris pilot a vintage Jaguar C-Type at the Mille Miglia
Mon, 15 Jul 2013
Jaguar is a regular runner in the Mille Miglia - in 2010 it entered 27 cars in the historic rally to celebrate its 75th anniversary. This year, in celebration of the F-Type, it registered just four cars with the factory team, but it loaded them up with some bigwig UK celebs like Daniel Day Lewis and Jasmin Le Bon. Chris Harris, our own autoverse celeb, was given a seat in a Jaguar C-Type with professional racing driver Alex Buncombe.
While Harris takes us on a tour of the route, he takes us on an even better tour of what the Mille Miglia is and what it takes to run it. It's a mess of memories, minutes, mementos and sleepless nights. The C-Type was first owned by Juan Manuel Fangio. Stages are timed and require one to drive at a set speed - once, when Buncombe and Harris arrive 90 minutes early they're forced to sit in the car for an hour. Then they sleep for four hours before getting back into a C-Type with an unsilenced exhaust. "There's no better way to get tinnitus."
You can watch the highlights of Harris' run from Brescia to Rome and back in the video below.
By Jonathon Ramsey