Mille Miglia.

Mille Miglia wheels are produced in Italy by Due Emme MilleMiglia. The company is located on the north western outskirts of Brescia , a historical industrial area long specialising in the casting of aluminium. With facilities constructed on 30,000 square metres, and with more than 150 employees, Due Emme MilleMiglia can currently count on well-consolidated markets and significant assets.

Due Emme MilleMiglia carries out the entire productive cycle in house: purchasing, development, construction of moulds, casting, machining, quality control and assurance, finishing, packing and dispatching. This has enabled a system of absolute quality to be developed. These high standards were recognised when Due Emme MilleMiglia became one of the first companies to be awarded the UNI ENI ISO 9001-94 certification.

The high quality of the wheels are guaranteed through the use of primary aluminium, which prevents impurity and offers optimum conditions for the casting process. The alloy used by Due Emme MilleMiglia is the result of 30 years of experience evaluating the properties required to give the best performance in tensile strength and stress resistance. Our own laboratory is continually analysing all new supplies of raw materials to ensure they meet our standards.

Due Emme MilleMiglia's formulae for high quality alloy wheels include two further ingredients. Firstly, the company has invested in the most modern and sophisticated equipment to handle the complex productive processes necessary. And secondly, the job is carried out with a passion for designing, thus delivering modern, innovative and attractive styles.

Mille Miglia UK Ltd is a sister company of Due Emme Mille Miglia. It imports the wheels manufactured in Italy and markets them in the UK through a network of independent dealers.

History
...... who knows if Nando Minoja, O.M. driver, arriving winner in Viale Venezia at seven in the morning on 27 March 1927 while Brescia still slept, and awaiting the returning vehicles of the first Mille Miglia Cup much later, could have faintly imagined that he had set the first seal on a legend destined to outlive its founders and protagonists. The covetousness of a great contest had been aroused, only a year earlier, in two scions of the Brescia nobility, Aymo Maggi 23 and Franco Mazzotti 22. The two set off every week, racing the train to Milan in their Bugatti or Fraschini, where they met the automobile enthusiasts; at the Biffi in the Galleria. There amongst simple fans, sports journalists, and champions of the day, Nuvolari, Borzacchini, Brilli Peri, Varzi, Danese, they decided to do something to restore to Brescia the role that she deserved in the automobile world.
In December 1926 they contacted another Brescia man, Renzo Castagneto, 34, a man with inborn organizational and show business gifts, secretary of the Brescia RACI, Regio Automobil Club d'Italia, (of which Mazzotti would be made president), and the Trento man, Milanese by adoption, Giovanni Canestrini, 32, journalist for the Gazzetta dello Sport, first journalist specialized in the automobile. The group thus composed, then called 'The Four Musketeers', proposed various solutions.
They lived in a decade of great challenges: these were the years of glorious enterprises, of Nobile's dirigible expedition to the North Pole, the flight of Lindbergh across the Atlantic , of speed records on land, sea, and in the air. These brilliant endeavours sparked the enthusiasm of our young Musketeers. Having discarded the idea of reviving one of the famous Brescia automobile races of the past (the "Grand Race on the road" of 1929, the celebrated "Week" of the beginning of the Century, the "Brescia Race" of 1905, for which the Florio Cup was awarded), they also had to drop the idea of reviving the Brescia Circuit, known as the "Fascia d'Oro", begun in the wilds between Montichiari and Ghedi, along which was contested the first "Gran Premio d'Italia", since the Brescian Arturo Mercanti (never forgiven by his fellow citizens so much so as to have to take part in the Mille Miglia under the pseudonym "Unknown Monk"), guessing the success of the circuits, he had recently inaugurated the Monza Autodrome. Unable to repeat a "Giro d'Italia", disdaining to imitate a regularity race, however hard, like the "Coppa delle Alpi", the necessity seemed evident to create something absolutely new and sensational.
The ideal course, hard and selective (consideration must be given to the state of the roads at that time and the low reliability of vehicles), was soon identified. This course answered some fundamental requirements; it involved half the peninsular offering choice among many tracks, it followed the custom of the time which aimed at everything converging on the capital and, something more important, it assigned to Brescia the role of protagonist. There only remained to find a name for the race; Franco Mazzotti, returned from a race in the United States, realizing that the route ran for about 1600 Km, immediately proposed "Coppa Mille Miglia" - the thousand mile cup.
The only opposition to the name came from the fear of being accused of admiring foreigners, but Canestrini remembered that the Roman Empire was measured in miles and the name was approved. The Mille Miglia was born officially.
Preparation was accordingly undertaken, amongst a series of difficulties and ill humor overcome thanks to the Milan press (the Gazzetta dello Sport allied themselves with our four from the beginning) and above all thanks to the political support of Augusto Turati, a Brescian at that time secretary of the Fascist Party.
Thus began a saga covering thirteen pre-war editions and in the eleven from '47 to '57 the most celebrated champions and the best cars gravitated towards Brescia from all parts of the world to deploy, at the order of Castagneto, at the point which foreign correspondents loved to call Viale Rebuffone, confusing it with Viale Venezia.

Curiosity
A piece of bread in one's pocket, or at the most some chestnut cake bought from a stall nearby, and one's everyday clothes (not the good ones, for holidays: maybe one would have to climb over some netting, or climb up a tree, to see the show better... and if they got broken, it would mean trouble!). At that time, many went like this to see the start of the Mille Miglia.
It was 1927 and Brescia boasted of being a highly respectable town. But for each person who had a full wallet, there were at least a hundred whose pockets were empty, people who wouldn't dream of taking a tram to get the Rebuffone area. These set out on foot, leaving at home even their bicycle, the only means of private transport which was widespread. Many went out of curiosity. Probably not everyone would have sworn to the happy outcome of this newly born race, not even the organizers themselves: Castagneto, Maggi, Mazzotti and Canestrini, the enthusiasm was already sky high. Gazing at these shining meteors which in theory could do up to 140 kilometres an hour was widely exciting. The youths ecstatic. In fact, more than one of them had played truant to be able to follow the various stages of scrutineering. The protagonists on the sides of what was to become "the most beautiful race in the world" were probably precisely them: the half grown boys, still wearing short trousers, and the youths, who gathered around in flocks surrounded by their best friends to greet the motor bigwigs who were leaving or to meet them on their return. Obviously, close to the heirarch Turati who sending off the race, there were ladies and gentlemen of different descent, but the crowds were made up mostly by common people. Poor people.
Above all people who crowded along the route outside the towns, and who still made their living off patches of ground. After all the Mille Miglia was above all theirs. They were the ones who were starved for the spectacle, for the wish to travel, to live a dream, at least for one day. Oh, in the town one certainly had more opportunity to be a bit more cheerful despite the times. Some could slip into a cinema, one of the many in Brescia . For example, there was the Crocera cinema which was enormous with 810 seats, and the Magenta, formerly the Salon Parisien, and the Sole, first known as Roi Soleil: beautiful, elegant cinemas which changed films as much as every two days, for the bougeois public who could afford to walk under the 'porticos', have an ice-cream and then dive into the pleasure of a new film. Who had less and could have less, was able to nip into a second series cinema located in the area of the Carmine, the Vittoria, Trieste and Brescia cinemas, places with wooden benches and a sheet for the screen, where Tox Mix's cavalcades took turns with the magnificant enterprises of Maciste, or one sighed before the trembling silent stars like Menichella and Gys. The Brescians read the sub-titles of the film in a chorus, and listened to the music strummed on the piano, there in the cinema. There were those who if they could had their ears glued to the radio. (Not many of them: in Italy the URI, which was to become the EIAR at the end of '27, had about 51.000 subscribers in all!). And from the radio came music, a lot of music, for dancing or for singing. Lola, cosa impari a scuola or Creola were whistled in the streets, or Piccinina or Biagio, adagio, or Nanni was sung. The more sophisticated, who liked the then very fashionable synchopated rythym and the more cheerful and more course grained preferred the easy double meanings in In riva al Po or things like that. Crazy Italy : with that general brushing of black fog which was already suffocating her, she still wanted to sing. And to dance. To the Charleston which was so much in fashion that one of Maestro d'Anzi's successes was called Charlestonmania. Scanty clothing, for the ladies, exaggerated necklines and impossibly long necklaces, down to one's belly button. They were happy people, those who could enjoy revues, operetta and the theatre. The others, instead, having no money, got on with it as best they could. Who knows how many, at daybreak of the Mille Miglia, threw the Race Bulletin away without paying for it. Right. The race. A dream. Even if, both at the start and at the finish it was blessed by rain. Pouring rain, coming down as fast as it could: it rained cats and dogs for both the first two editions of the race. Drenched spectators, and the drivers, at the end, were unrecognizable, covered with masks of mud. Poor Italy : the roads were rough and broken, so full of holes and stones that during the race many competitors had to change their tyres once, twice, four times and even six times, they were so worn out and broken. No heed. The Mille Miglia was beautiful and mythical also for this reason: it was like a long cavalcade with a certain amount of snares and dangers. A sudden bend, and then after than, a ditch, or a cow pacifically wandering about outside his field. For the seventy seven magnificent drivers, there were trials to be overcome, just like the princes in fairy tales. 'Bravo' Morandi, Minoia, Varzi, Nuvolari. 'Bravo' because they created a dream, because they were heralds of promises, promises of travels and therefore promises of the future. It was obvious that the Mille Miglia would pass from being an awaited rite to a radiant myth. On the doorstep of the Thirties Italy needed a springboard, a little bit of hope. And Brescia too. That still tiny Brescia , gathered around the historic centre. With the parties and associations dissolved, thought to be contrary to the regime; the freedom of the press abolished (here the only source of information was Il Popolo di Brescia), instituted Special Tribunals and with them the death sentance and political exile. Everybody in town, like everywhere else, was forced to wear the badge on their lapel which was immediately re-named "bug" by the Bresciani. It didn't matter if the Brescia-Bergamo motorway was being built, or if the west side of Garda was being opened. Many Brescians would have certainly preferred something else. They also needed the Mille Miglia for something. As it went around the roads of Italy maybe it fomented the sacrosanct wish to run, but to run freely. Things of other times, luckily. The fascination of travelling and of speed, of the car and of competition have now taken on completely different meanings. But it could be possible that, in repeating the Mille Miglia, in the granny-cars which arouse more tenderness than enthusiasm, some pallid echo of past dreams and passion remains. It is possible that repeating it now does not mean getting bogged down in a swamp of nostalgia, but reopening the pages of an exciting adventure, with the wish of finding out more about this old myth. Even legends help one to understand.