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Driving the Mille Miglia is not quite the five-star Italian vacation it appears in Jaguar’s video below. The route is befuddling, the traffic dense, and on top of it all, you’re expected to weave your rare vintage sports car around even rarer vintage sports cars while dealing with a back ache, a sore bum, and melted shoe rubber. We can’t speak to that latter part, however, since we ran the entire route in a 2016 F-type R Coupe—along with our tour in a 2015 Bentley Continental GT—cocooned behind real windshields in air-conditioned comfort.
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One in every dozen cars at the start in Brescia was a Jaguar, and of those 37, nine were entered by Jaguar’s factory-run Heritage Racing team. All of its meticulously prepared cars—three C-types, three D-types, two XK120s, and an XK140—finished the 1000-mile loop without trouble, although one of the XK120s we were supposed to drive suffered gasket problems the team couldn’t quite fix. Considering a fifth of the Mille’s 456 drivers ended with a DNF (including four non-Heritage Jags), that’s a mighty impressive stat for old England.
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- In the Middle of the Mille Miglia: We Run the World’s Most Storied Road Rally
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- Ian Callum: Jaguar Purring Over F-Pace, Next XK “Not a Priority”
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- First Drive: 2016 Jaguar F-type Manual and AWD
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The Jag video can’t do the Mille Miglia justice, with the delicious sights and stenches of these one-of-a-kind cars roaring through their unsynchronized gears, but it’s worth watching to at least get a taste. Jaguar’s afterparty was a hoot—we’re thankful there are no public videos of that occasion—but for the company’s celebrity drivers, including LeMans-winner Derek Bell, it was their first five-star blowout all week. Just this once, you could honestly pity them.
- -from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/1G7OzOs
via Agya
