b500 magazine
1,000 MILES With Gioel Molinari
Gioel is a technology entrepreneur passionate about analog machines, food, photo, friends and great experiences in beautiful places. Raised in Milan, educated in the USA as an engineer. Currently on sabbatical pondering how to best integrate work and life.
S
ummer of 2021 presents a unique combination of ingredients: a relief from pandemic lockdowns enabled by vaccine rollouts, a world largely devoid of tourism, and for many including myself a new and deeper understanding of the value of personal time, family, health, and sharing experiences with friends. This was the backdrop for me and 3 friends’ return to proper road rallying which took place during the recent 2021 edition of 1000 Miglia in Italy from June 16-19. This year’s event had been postponed from the traditional May timeframe and was exceptionally well attended: close to 400 historic cars and an additional 100 from Ferrari Tribute, the most ever. We were blessed with sunny weather, extraordinary cars that ran beautifully for the entire week, spectacular food and beverages, and above all an entire country that celebrated and cheered us on the entire way. Though we followed the route the vast majority of the way, we took some liberties adjusting for our own meal choices and an occasional highway stint when we were late for dinner or simply wanted to break free of the remaining 100+ Ferrari that were in the Tribute convoy. Thus was born our first edition of ‘1000 Miglia Modificata’. Planning for the trip started in January 2021 with an incredibly fortuitous find
of a two owner Ferrari F50 in Italy. The car had been dormant in storage for about 10 years and previously owned by a well known Italian Gentleman Racer. An F50 has been on my Analog Legends roadmap for some time and I had just missed a very nice example in the UK that was sold in December. I jumped at the opportunity and arranged to have the car refreshed at Autofficina Bonini in Reggio Emilia. Over the course of the Spring, the amazing and knowledgeable Bonini team went about returning this F50 to running order in preparation for its 1000 mile re-introduction to its home country. The only modification that was made was installation of a Tubi Style sport exhaust including manifolds. This setup retains sport mufflers and is a great and reasonable balance of loudness and exhaust note improvement. We arrived in Reggio Emilia in our support vehicle, a Lancia Delta Futurista by Automobili Amos, also recently completed and newly delivered the week of the event. It was wonderful to share the Futurista, number 8 of 20, with the team at Bonini and to hear their thoughts on the work done to this other Italian classic. The next 4 days saw us alternating driving and shaking down the two cars through mountain passes, countryside roads, highways and city centres. In addition to the standard route provided by the 1000 Miglia, we added stops in Milan and Bergamo bookending the trip and completing an additional 300 miles in the cars. We were greeted by
37
