A tiny elderly woman is shooing all the Minis into line, acting for all the world like a sheep dog trying to put manners on a meandering flock.
“Up close, Up close,” 81-year-old Giulia (Julia) St George tells each driver, encouraging them to nudge up against the rear bumper of the Mini in front. “Don’t be like in England, leaving lots of space. You must drive” – and she smacks the palms of her hands – “together! Up close!”
And with that we’re off, the dust and autumn leaves of Rome’s Piazzale Giuseppe Garibaldi scattering in our wake as four carabinieri motorcycle outriders leapfrog each other to seal off junctions and hold back the city’s other drivers while we whizz through conga-like.
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Rome’s notoriously tetchy drivers seem remarkably tolerant as 25 Minis, all bunting and flags and promotional stickers, pursue an exuberant excursion that includes, inevitably, St Peter’s Square and, of course, a pirouette past the Colosseum.
Welcome to “The Italian Job 2015”, the 26th annual England-to-Italy (and back again) holiday and children’s charity fundraiser based loosely on the 1969 British film. It is organised by Giulia, her affable son, Freddie, and a cheery band of Italian and English helpers.
Our latter-day caper doesn’t have the laconic, wily lad of Michael Caine’s Cockney gangster Charlie Croker leading a band of bullion robbers on a lark that includes Minis hurtling across roofs, down church steps and through Turin’s streets and pavements (and in which our speed cop film doubles are portrayed as hapless incompetents), all ending in suspense – literally – in the Swiss Alps.
But we do have Bill Handley. “Motor trade?” says Bill, chunky gold bracelet catching the sunlight as he polishes the bonnet of his bright red vintage Mini. “Motor trade?” he repeats in pure East End, putting my question back at me. “Let’s say I have an interest, know what I mean?”
Bill has many interests. He’s an ex-Met undercover police officer-turned successful businessman – taxi firm operator, event manager, clay pigeon shoot organiser and charter yacht owner – and a long-time supporter of the Italian Job’s charity efforts. Over the next week, Bill and his wife Linda, who are on their ninth Italian Job, emerge as the stand-out fun couple in a group of some 50 Mini enthusiasts.
They are known collectively as Jobbers and include a fair share of mild eccentrics, most of them terribly English in that lovely, gentle way the English have of being, well, just a little eccentric at times.
Each morning in our four-star Rome hotel, Nick Rowe unfurls a plastic bag of bran, a must for his breakfast, along with English tea bags and the little jar of Marmite he’s brought all the way from Essex.
He and William Hampton are in an open top, 1974 Mark II Belgian-built Mini 850, two tall men inside a toy-town car. William loves the little car, while remarking, with almost fatherly indulgence, that “it doesn’t have enough break horse power to blow the skin off a blancmange”.
The car was for a while resident in Monaco and still sports a grill badge for the Automobile Club de Monaco. In 1980, William turned it into a convertible by cutting off the roof. Sacrilege, surely?
“If you are going to be a purist, you have to have an original Cooper S Mark I from the 1960s,” says William.
For knowledgeable purists, however, there’s no topping Will Tyler, a man who knows more about Minis than I will ever know about anything. Ever. The serial number of every widget in the 1974 Mini Cooper S is as familiar to Will as is my date of birth to me. In a car park where we pause one morning for coffee, Will ambles over to the open-top and peers at its paintwork. “Is that cinnabar or vermilion?” he asks.
“It looks like the 1275 GT colour,” says Roger Hunt, veteran of no fewer than 14 Italian Jobs
“You’re absolutely right,” William says.
Each day, from our base in Rome we set off into the Italian countryside, to Lazio and Umbria, and to Tuscany with its sensuous rolling hills and fields bathed in that golden, late autumn sunlight that turns every vista into a portrait. We visit vineyards and olive groves large and small, sometimes off the beaten track and testament to Freddie and Giulia’s local knowledge.
We’re given warm welcomes everywhere as people come to inspect the Minis. Lunches are a delight and one, at the Fattoria Madonna delle Macchie olive farm and winery, was a total knock-out. We pay homage to ancient times by dropping into Ostia Antica, a city by the mouth of the Tiber dating from the 7th century BC.
“Why did the Romans build everything in ruins?” asks my co-driver Geoff as we wander through.
For the serious part of the rally, time trials are a key feature. Generally speaking, this is where grown adults try to drive a Mini between two points, separated by a distance of, oh, perhaps a challenging 50 metres. The challenge is to cover the distance within the seconds allotted.
Drivers inch their Mini to the starting line, usually in a car park or on the roof of a city-centre building, eyes glued to an LED clock hooked up to a computer. The co-drivers use their smartphone stopwatches and, when the LED indicates the off, shout things like “Go, go, go, go!” followed by “Slow down! Slow down!” or “Faster, faster, faster!” as the finishing line, also connected to the computer, looms.
Variations of the straight-linebetween-two-points time trial include snaking in and out of a row of traffic cones and (a favourite): squashing a circle of paper cups with one’s front tyres, all within a given number of seconds.
“It’s fascinating how involved you get at something so arbitrary and pointless,” says Danny Fenske, a 57-year-old doctor from Bedford, team-mate of Colin Goodger, a retired prison officer.
You can take it all seriously or, like Karen Dickens and Elisabeth Shield, giggle at how bonkers it all is and just enjoy it.
There’s a skite to Vallelunga, the 1.8km racing circuit owned by the Automobile Club d’Italia where we are shown what happens when your car gets into a violent skid travelling at just 45km/h. (Answer: your car spins like a dervish, but amazingly, with a little tuition and practice on the rain-drenched skid mats, you learn how to counter the aquaplane spinning and regain control of the vehicle.)
The whole caper wends its way to Turin and the giant Lingotto building. Built in the 1920s, the former Fiat car factory looks like something from the set of Metropolis. In 1969, however, it played a key supporting role in The Italian Job.
The half-kilometre-long building with a hole in the middle is now a hotel and shopping centre. But the racetrack on the roof with its 45 degree banking at either end is just as it was when the Fiats were road tested after assembly below . . . and when Charlie Croker and the lads did there thing.
Next up are our 25 Minis plus Martyn Wadsley and his geriatric but well-up-for-itLand Rover. The city is far below us and the snow-capped Alps give a picture post-card backdrop. We do a quick time trial and half circuit of the roof. Then it’s off down the helter-skelter internal road and into the city, carabinieri motorcycle escort riders doing the honours once again.
We hurtle through the narrow streets with their cafes and shopping colonnades, horns honking and flags waving while the locals cheer and wave at (probably for them, yet another) Italian Job and Mini fan club tour of their city.
Joined by a dozen local Mini enthusiasts, we pass the Palazzo a Vela (where the Minis careered around its umbrella-like roof); the Gran Madre di Dio (Minis down the church steps); the Villa della Regina (Charlie and the gang’s OTT 18th century lair); and then to the banks of the Po (where the Minis evaded the cops by whizzing across the top of a weir, splaying an arc of water in their wake – sadly not repeated by your latter-day drivers, the organisers being no fun at all . . . )
And stopping by the riverside where the Minis lined up, it was photos for all.
Motorcycle cop Franco Vercelli dismounted his 20-year-old BMW 1150 GS and stood looking happily at the row of Minis after their boisterous triumphal escorted tour through his city.
The Italian Jobbers all thanked him and his colleagues.
"You are very welcome," he says. "Is for us, a great pleasure. We love the Minis." And then, leaning forward as though imparting a carefully guarded secret, he says: "I have the original film in my home."
HOW TO BE PART OF THE RALLY: Participation in The Italian Job rally costs £1,200 per person and each team of two is expected to raise a donation to charity of £1,500. This year, the chosen recipient was Variety, the children's charity, which operates in the UK and Ireland.
Most participating teams raise their £1,500 through sponsorship, many selling A4-sized advertising spaces on their Minis for between €200 and €300 a slot. For £1,200, participants get 10 days’ full board and lodging in four-star hotels. Lodging sometimes includes unlimited wine and a gala dinner in England at the end.
Also included in the price is the cost of daily excursions and entry to places of interest, such as museums, castles, vineyards or olive groves, plus daily lunch. The rally takes place in late October and early November. Participants provide their own vehicles and pay fuel costs.
The drive is from England to Italy, via several routes that vary each year but usually include France and Switzerland, and may also include Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, visiting places along the way.
The main part of the rally is based in Italy, usually centring on five or six days in Turin, though sometimes, as this year, visiting Rome, Parma and Turin.
Any vehicle may participate in the rally as long as it appeared in the film, The Italian Job. Those vehicles included the 1962 and 1963 Alfa Romeo Giulia, the 1962 Aston Martin DB4 convertible, the 1962 Austen A60 Cambridge, several varieties of Fiat, Ford and Lancia, several types of vans, a Bedford Val 14 bus and Land Rover 109 series IIa, Vespa scooters and Moto Guzzi Falcone motorcycles, and a 1941 Dodge WC 62 riot control vehicle.
The film is remembered above all, however, for the starring role taken by the Mini Cooper S. Almost all participants drive either classic Minis or their contemporary BMW-built cousins.
Since its inception in 1990, The Italian Job charity has raised more than £2.5 million for children. Sufficient funds were raised by the 2015 rally to buy another sunshine coach for Variety.
Peter Murtagh and Geoff Hill hooked up with the rally in Rome and stayed until Turin, driving a modern Mini Cooper D as guests of Giulia and Freddie. They came a respectable 13th in the rally, which was won by Will Tyer and co-driver Annie White.
Further information on next year's jaunt from October 29th to November 5th may be found on italianjob.com.
Registration is open now.
