If You Build It, They Will Come (Post # 108)

It may look deserted here, but for one day a year this 60 mile stretch of Texas Highway 285 is the scene of  the "most challenging  road race in the world".  Richard Coberly.

A funny thing happened in New Guinea after World War II. Airplane effigies made from sticks and grass began appearing in clearings in the jungle. Investigators discovered that local tribesmen made the clearings and built the "airplanes" in the mistaken belief that they would bring back the halcyon days of WWII when airstrips built by the combatants supplied them with tons of "cargo"--their first taste of foodstuffs and luxuries from the outside world. Anthropologists called them "cargo cults", but you can think of it as the belief that "If you build it, they will come."  

Cargo cult, New Guinea  style.  

A Car-Go Cult Thrives in the Desert

About 20 years ago some folks in the vast, empty expanse of West Texas south of I-10 decided to establish their own "car-go" cult.  They arranged to have a 60 mile stretch of highway 285 between Ft. Stockton and Sanderson closed to traffic for a day and invited people to see how fast they could cover the 120 mile distance there and back. It worked! People came from all over and have kept coming ever since. Today it is billed as "The most challenging road race in the world."

Car-Go Cult, West Texas style.

The Alfatross and its siblings were created to be Grand Touring cars that you could drive all week and race on the weekends. As such, they all aspired to run in the most famous endurance road race of the period, the Mille Miglia (MM), one lap over a 1,000 mile course over Italian public highways. In fact, Alfa Romeo won more of these races than any other manufacturer. In 1956, the first year The Alfatross was eligible to run in the MM, 23 Alfa 1900s and 3 1900 Zagatos were entered.  Sadly, The Alfatross was not among them. Discontinued in 1957, there has been nothing like the MM since then (the modern MM is a completely different time/speed/distance rally) for classic and vintage cars built before 1957. 

Tech inspection takes 2 days.  They're looking for safety
rule compliance mainly because race classes are based on
target speed, not engine type, displacement or vehicle
modifications.

But what was the REAL MM like in?  To find the answer to that question we packed ourselves off to Ft. Stockton last weekend on the 60th anniversary of the 1956 MM to savor the 2016 Big Bend Open Road Race (BBORR), one of only four such races in the United States. 

Most entries were road-registered and driven to
the BBORR by their owners.  Others, like this example, were
trailered.

OK, I admit that it's kind of a stretch to compare the original 1,000 mile 1950s Italian national event with the little-known 120 mile race in Texas in 2016, and I doubt if any of the contestants we met made the a connection with the MM, but I saw some revealing parallels.

I was surprised at how few Italian exotics were present.
American supercars such as late-model Corvettes, Vipers,
Cobra replicas, and Chargers were the weapons of choice. 

At least two of these Radicals showed up.  I never found 
out how they did.

First of all, the MM was apparently open to the public, subject to an entry fee and some kind of inspection. None of the sources I consulted even mentioned how the organizers made the cut back then, but I do know that 534 cars divided into 12 classes made it to the starting line for the 1955 MM. 

Sure, some of them were factory entries, but most were probably driven by their owners who were wannabe racer gearheads. Given the length of the race, navigators were allowed in addition to the drivers. The vehicles ranged from the sublime, like the Mercedes 300 SLR driven by winner Stirling Moss, to the ridiculous, like the Fiat 600 of Osvaldo Pierie that finished 273rd. Cars were released at one minute intervals to lessen congestion on the roads. The simple goal was was to get to the finish line as fast as possible.

What I observed at the BBORR was essentially the same thing: Open to the public, entry fee, inspection, a limit on the number of entrants, wide disparity between vehicle and driver capabilities, navigators allowed, and cars released one at a time in sequence with the fastest cars going first. In 2015, the last year for which results are published, there were 158 cars divided into 16 classes. For cars in the "Unlimited" class the race was just like the MM: no upper speed limit, just cover the distance as fast as possible. The other classes, Super Sport, Grand Sport, Grand Touring, Touring, and Street Rod, were not defined by type of vehicle or engine displacement, but on the maintenance of a target speed ranging from 85 to 130 mph. For those classes it was more of a time/distance/speed rally than a race against the clock.

During the MM the course was lined by hundreds of thousands of spectators in towns and roadsides along the route cheering the cars as they blasted by. The BBORR has none of that. Unless you are driving or navigating there isn't much to see of the actual race. Public safety concerns killed the MM following a bad accident involving spectators in 1957, and the BBORR organizers are not taking any chances on suffering the same fate. Highway 285 is closed to traffic during the race and the only people who get to see the cars at speed are the official roadside monitors who note the passing of each car, record speeds, and deal with breakdowns.

In 1955, the year The Alfatross was produced, Stirling Moss set the all-time record covering the 1,000 miles  with an average speed of 157.650 kph (97.96 mph).  In 2015 Larry Robinson won the BBORR with an average speed of 250.543 kph--155.680 mph!

The rest of us have to be content gawking at the cars and schmoozing with the entrants during the tech inspections and car shows held in Ft. Stockton's Rooney Park before and after the race.  And you can drive the course all you want the other 364 days a year and dream about what it would be like to do it at 155 mph!

This race is for REAL!  In the 1956 MM there were 13 accidents, 3 of which were fatal.  Modern safety equipment and the absence of spectators meant the driver of this vehicle walked away with nothing worse than a bruised wallet.

Having driven her entry all the way from Santa Fe Toni was shocked when it was disqualified over safety concerns.