Category Archives: Cars

Jeeps, Jags and Joy at Fornoli

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The late summer vintage car gathering in Fornoli, combined with a crafts market, is one event that I truly look forward to. It’s now in its second year.

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There is nostalgia for a time when traffic jams were occasional, when children could sit between their parents on one continuous front seat, when seat belts were unknown, when the AA man on his motorcycle and sidecar saluted you as you drove past him, when gears were changed in the steering column, when dickey seats opened up out the rear boot….ah I could go on.

One car at the event which sums up quite a few of these images was the Triumph Roadster 1800 dating from 1946 and appearing  in the TV series ‘Bergerac’. Designed for the US market, (hence its name – a roadster is what Americans call a two-seater sports car) the car, a remodelling of the firm’s pre-war Dolomite, has a largely aluminium body because of post-war steel shortages and is the last to feature dickey seats. Performance isn’t exactly its best feature (it can barely touch 80 mph) but its appearance remains quite impressive. Only around two thousand came off the assembly lines and Italy has three of them.

Here is a selection of other vintage vehicles at Fornoli last Sunday for lovers of older cars to spot. Note the Citroen DS (pronounced Deese i.e. Goddess in French) with its pioneering hydropneumatic suspension, disc brakes and futuristic looks, the Alfas, the Fiat 1100s, 600s and 500s (we still miss ours, crunched up in 2017), the MGs, the Jaguar, Jeep and other delightful and elegant specimens when cars were still being designed and assembled by humans rather than computers.

At the end of the morning the stirring rumble of vintage engines filled the air as the procession of cars set off for their proud owners’ lunch. What devotion has gone into making these cars look still wonderfully young while we….

Time for Revisione

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I’ve often been asked…I’ve sometimes been asked…someone asked me once: ‘can you recommend a decent garage around Bagni di Lucca?’

Depends really what one is looking for.  Do you have a car, a motorbike, a scooter, an ‘automobile d’epoca’ (vintage car), for example?

My scooter MOT came up this June. MOT is called ‘revisione’ in Italian and the first MOT has to be done four years after the scooter has been registered (immatricolata) for the very first time. Thereafter, it’s due every two years.

Checks are carried out on the following:

  1. Documents relating to the vehicle.
  2. Brakes.
  3. Exhaust gas.
  4. Noise level.
  5. Lights including beam alignment.
  6. Check to see if the original vehicle specifications have been changed without authorisation.

If the revisione is successfully passed then a stamp is placed in the vehicle’s ‘libretto di circolazione’ (vehicle registration document). If it isn’t then there are two options. Either the revisione is to be repeated or, in the worst cases, the vehicle is ‘sospeso’ or withheld from going on the road again.

The best place to have a revisione for a car in Bagni, in my opinion, is the one just to the right of the road leading to Fornoli railway station. For a motorcycle or scooter then the best choice is Lombardi at Pian Della Rocca, between Borgo Penny Market and Calavorno.

The standard charge for a revisione is, for 2019, Euro 65.

Many garages in Italy are veritable mini-museums of nostalgic wonders. While I was myself ‘sospeso’ waiting for the results of my Aprilia Scarabeo’s MOT I wandered round the place and noticed the following, including a WW2 Italian army Moto Guzzi and a delectable Porche, quite apart from the sweet Cinquina, one of which we were the proud owners of before it ended its life (and almost ours) just over two years ago.

Incidentally,  I sold my old Triumph to Lombardi, having decided that one more avenue of pleasure, that of motobike riding, was due for closure.

For further details see Lombardi’s web site at

https://autofficina-lombardi.business.site/

 

 

Fornoli’s first vintage car rally

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Fornoli’s first vintage car rally took place last Sunday. Although heavy thunderstorms were forecast, a courageous band of cars made it to San Cassiano including several classic cinquine, of which we were the proud owners of one before our accident last April.

The participants were invited to an aperitif and a visit to the local museum where the statue of the knight, said to be Saint Martin and sculpted by the great early renaissance artist, Jacopo della Quercia, is displayed.

We are expecting more bad weather over the next few days and the whole area is under yellow alert. Pity the poor tourists who have chosen this part of the world to spend their late summer holidays…

I was able to view Paul Anthony Davies’ magnificent photographic book of one year in the life of San Cassiano (2016-17). This is definitely a book to treasure, covering all aspects of life in this mountain community.

Anyway here are some of my own snaps of the morning last Sunday at San Cassiano.

 

 

The Battle of Sommocolonia

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You couldn’t get closer to the feel of what it must have been like in our area during World War Two than a visit to the encampment of allied forces at Villa Fiori last week-end. The historical gothic line re-enactment group were immaculately accurate in their uniforms and the women especially brilliant in their hairstyles and make-up.

For me, however, it was the incomparable range of military vehicles, including the original jeeps and the Moto Guzzi ‘Alce’ (meaning ‘elk in English) in production between 1938 and 1948, and which was designed for military and police use. I have rarely seen, not even in war museums, such flawlessly kept vehicles.

In the casinò there was a preview of a film on the Great War of (for Italy) 1915-8 to be premiered in Lucca this October. This was followed by a harrowing film on the battle of Sommocolonia, the biggest and bloodiest conflict during World war two in our area.

On Boxing day, 26 December 1944, the village of Sommocolonia, near Barga, was the scene of “Operation Wintergewitter”, an offensive conducted on the Gothic Line by the Axis Italian-German forces against US troops (92nd Division “Buffalo”), supported by the XI area partisan under the legendary ‘Pippo’. The US troops were black and under the unreservedly racist command of white American officers. Considered stereotypically lazy fighters, the troops were valiant in this last great battle on the Italian front. Shamefully, however, it was not until the 1990’s that their heroism was at last recognized by the USA.

Photos of the battle of Sommocolonia)

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(Nazi headquarters, interrogation centre and torture chamber in Ponte a Serraglio’s ex-Hotel de Russie.)

There were over 150 casualties among the allied forces (including John Robert Fox, posthumously decorated  with the American Medal of Honour) and 7 victims among civilians including a 6 month old baby, and over 50% of the villages buildings were destroyed by bombing. The last bombs, two Mk2 American hand grenades, were only removed and defused in July 2009.

(John Robert Fox. Posthumous Medal of Honor, 1997)

What was the objective of this German offensive? It’s still unclear although the allied thrust through the Apennines to liberate the remaining part of Italy under the Nazi-fascist puppet government of the Salò republic had to be delayed until April 1945. The Germans could have advanced to capture the munitions factory at Fornaci di Barga, (still in operation today but now manufacturing Euro coins). What was the point of wreaking death and destruction to a mountain village? There are parallels with the Ardennes ‘Battle of the Bulge’ in Belgium which took place at the same time for both operations were only to delay the advance of allied troops and the utter defeat of Hitler’s ‘master race’.

The pity of war, to use poet Wilfrid Owen’s phrase, was fully revealed to us that Saturday afternoon…

A Thousand Roman Miles Towards Sarzana

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Italy’s ‘Mille Miglia’ retains its reputation as one of the world’s great car rallies.   It is, of course, not a thousand UK miles but a thousand Roman miles, which equal about one thousand six hundred kilometres, starting from Brescia in Northern Italy and going to Rome and back in a figure-of-eight-course over four days.

It is also not the original race, which was founded in 1927 by Count Aymo Maggi and Franco Mazzotti and ran until 1957, with an interruption due to WWII between 1941 and 1946.

The original Mille Miglia was an endurance race open to all drivers and cars, the slower ones starting rather earlier than the faster ones (as still happens today). The Mille Miglia was also the race which introduced Ferrari to the world (its first win in 1948) and was largely won by Italians, except for 1931 (Mercedes-Benz) and 1940 (BMW) by Germany and, most famously, in 1955 by the great Stirling Moss and Navigator Denis Jenkinson driving a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR (“Sport Leicht Rennen”) with an average speed of 157.65 km/h (97.96 mph) over 1,600 kilometres (990 miles).

I first witnessed this stirring motor cavalcade in 2014 when the Mille Miglia entrants did a lap of honour on Lucca’s tree-lined walls. To see pictures of this event click on my post at https://longoio.wordpress.com/2014/05/18/a-thousand-miles/

The 2015 Mille Miglia was particularly exciting as the then mayor Betti had it routed through Bagni di Lucca. Again there’s my post on it at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2015/05/17/a-thousand-miles-to-bagni-di-lucca/ . We managed to take part in it, unofficially of course, as we then had our much loved Cinquina which, alas, is no more after our near-fatal car accident a little over one year ago.

We drove our much-missed cutey up Bagni di Lucca’s high street and received our share of the applause too. That was compensation enough for having missed George Cluny on his Silver Bugatti!

Here is the view of our car taken by another well-known Bagni di Lucca blogger:

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As the driver (Sandra) commented ‘it was truly sensational me driving the Cinquina, such fun was amazed at the reception we got and we were just off homewards!’

This year we saw the Mille Miglia on its way from Massa Rosa to Sarzana and delighted in the spectacle from a bar just outside Pietrasanta. (PS If your vintage and classic car spotting is a little rusty click on

Click to access 2018_05_11_ordine.pdf

to get the car details from its rally number. For example number 93 is a Fiat 508 S Balilla Sports Coppa oro dating from 1934.

We then followed the Mille Miglia route taken from Lucca. Although it was exciting to see the amazing vintage and classic cars spin past us we had a near miss at one stage when a white Ferrari in a crazy overtake almost crashed into us. Thankfully, Sandra’s quick reflexes enabled her to pull aside into an almost non-existent lay-by and the car behind us to skid to a halt. I reflected that the Mille Miglia is still a very dangerous race and that the crazy mix-up of vintage, classic, latest sports, vans, sponsor vehicles and other traffic is wrong. The route should be closed specially for the Mille Miglia and alternatives provided for the couple of hours that the rally requires to pass by.

There is an excellent web site run by the organisers of the Mille Miglia at http://www.1000miglia.it/

I was particularly interested in the list of entries which you can find at http://www.1000miglia.it/attach/Content/Interna/2503/o/2018_05_11_ordine.pdf

And the route map which you can find at

http://www.1000miglia.it/Edizione-2018/Il-Percorso-3D/

In my family the greatest car enthusiasts were my father, who started driving an Austin seven, graduated to an Austin A70, followed by an Austin Cambridge before tackling Dagenham steel with various Ford Consuls. He then went for Volvos before finishing up with a Chelsea tractor (alias Range Rover). My younger brother was a particularly keen rally co-driver. Indeed, he followed his passion up to the last moment since the funeral hearse was an E-type Jaguar from his own collection of classic cars.