It seems the black-clad biker on its tail is there to shield the Lancia; the two amble along as one and efforts to pass are futile. A police motorcyclist sees my frustration but soon slips by; then, at the next time control when I can finally nip past, the motorcyclist waits then follows me to make sure I don't do anything daft now I'm off the leash.How daft shouldn't I be? We exit a left-hand hairpin and there's a long, uphill straight lined with cheering fans. Foot to the floor, up to maybe 90mph, police bike clamped to my right rear quarter He's loving it. Then some more bends, the police bike nips by and, when he sees it's clear round the next bend, beckons me on over the double white lines. The gearbox has only four forward gears and they're widely spaced, so clearly this car is designed with torque in mind.The road climbs, bend after bend, other cars pulling over to let the alien being from another time flash past. In the duomo's cool crypt some stones must surely be vibrating to the crackle of a Ferrari V12 or the seismic explosion of the American Scarab's Traco V8, the noisiest engine in the Mille as well as the most potent.Now for the most challenging part of the Mille Miglia, the Futa and Raticosa passes.

I'm thoroughly plugged into the SL now, its brakes are biting better and have lost their worrying pull to the left, and I've learnt that tight, twisty roads are better taken in third gear, scooting along on the engine's lovely torque, than revving it had in second.

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It's hard to see out of, unlike the glasshouse Gullwing, and its steering has a kind of PlayStation quality divorced from the reality of road forces and feedback. You drive it like a game - a worrying thought, given its pace - but the children in the crowds love it. It's of their generation.This SLR feels more alive, more real, the faster you go, and today we can go fast in a way you normally cannot. It's a thrill, and it will be a rare one because reality will soon return, but I'm not sorry to be back in the SL for the drive into Siena and through Il Campo, the piazza that's home to the Palio horse race that's as mad in its way as the Mille Miglia.

And thence to Florence, followed by a D-type whose exhaust sounds like a stiff cloth being savagely torn, and can you believe we're driving right by the duomo? In a country that has declared the baby Fiat Cinquecento to be virtually a national monument, a posse of mobile artworks from the world's greatest car-creators is close to sacred. It's a kind of honorary participant, 50 years on from its namesake's win, and what a different world it reveals. Massively quick, it coccoons you rather than pitching you into the action. Some may regard fast and dangerous old cars as instruments of the devil, but here in Italy they're next to godliness.Day three, and from Rome to Buonconvento, south of Siena, I've swapped to a new Mercedes SLR McLaren with a carbonfibre body, a supercharged V8 engine and the ability to breach 200mph. And what's this? We're roaring past St Peter's Cathedral, our own unburnt hydrocarbons taking the place of the papal conclave smoke of a few weeks ago. (The reason is half a century's automotive progress, notably in brakes, and everything is fast downhill.) Again the junctions are staffed by police on foot and Moto Guzzis.