One Thousand Great Miles

To paraphrase the man, some rich are REALLY different.

It was a delightful May Sunday morning on Nob Hill, and the vintage cars continued to pull up, one after another, to join the masterpieces which had already been assigned to their places. The Fairmont Hotel beamed in the sunlight, flags of the world all aflutter above the portico, and San Francisco sprawled around us under a rich blue sky enhanced by fleets of fluffy white clouds.

A modern edition of the once-famous Mille Miglia was scheduled to depart on the morrow from this very spot, and the alfresco car show featured not only the fine racers of the past that were participating in the rally, but many other unique specimens as well. A weekend event displaying fine antique cars down in Silicon Valley sent some of its prime specimens to the Fairmont to provide some context for the old speedsters, and the combination of types offered a fine cross section of rich folks' automotive toys, '20s, '30s style. We were particularly impressed by a grey Packard, its swan hood ornament reaching its neck into the wind a perfect focal point for the long hood; they were an altogether ideal complement to the old Flood Mansion, now known as the Pacific Union Club.

The Mille Miglia originally came to life in 1927, when cars and other engineering marvels of the early years of the 20th Century captured the imaginations of men and boys everywhere. While pilots attempted to make the first flights across the English Channel--and later the Atlantic--intrepid drivers set speed and endurance records racing across countries and continents. The Paris-Madrid Race of 1905 initiated a century's worth of exciting, dangerous contests, spawning, eventually the likes of Le Mans, NASCAR, the Indy 500 and the Formula-1 circuit. Italy's signature event was to be the Mille Miglia: A thousand miles. The Mille Miglia route ran from Brescia to Rome and back over roads that barely deserved the name; that era ended in 1957, when the new la dolce vita replaced the old, and such car races became passe as sophisticated factory teams with professional drivers supplanted the gentleman adventurers of the old school. Sterling Moss set the all-time record in 1955, averaging 158 miles an hour.

The California version of the fine tradition began in 1991; Martin Swig, one-time San Francisco dealer of Alfa Romeos and all-round bon vivant quickly became a guiding spirit, and this was its 15th outing. The ever changing route this year would head north from San Francisco through Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino and Humboldt counties, and a northernmost stop at Ferndale, the perfectly preserved little Victorian village comprised of redwood jewels constructed by proud carpenters using the product of local lumber mills. Speed, of course, is no longer encouraged these days, and the rally-style event instead stresses map-reading and speed-limit-keeping skills. Along the way, drivers would avail themselves of the opportunity to view some of the most stunning scenery on the continent, with stops at elegant little hotels and gourmet restaurants during the course of the week-long tour. Driving excellence, as measured here, would consist of arriving on time for lunch. To enter, one need only pay $4500, and have available a vehicle built no later than 1957, that last year of the old race.

The cars continued to accumulate in front of the Fairmont, and we found ourselves immediately drawn to an old maroon Chevy. It was a beefy-looking coupe of the postwar era, with rack atop and hand-painted lettering along the side revealing it to have once been Juan Manuel Fangio's ride in one of the great endurance races of the past. A renegade-looking '54 Mercury parked nearby seemed to be one of the few other American entries, and it, too, bore lettering revealing it to be a car with a competitive rough-road pedigree.

Our own favorite was a steel-silver Fiat 8V, a '50s racing model resembling a '63 Jaguar XKE, but shortened, with a more muscular look than that of the latter mentioned classic. Its clean, functional lines screamed modern design and power, and you could almost hear the engine roar and the gears wind out even as it sat there mute on the street. All the Italians were well-represented, in no small part because of Mr. Swig, who seems to have hung on to quite a few of the Alfas that passed through his hands. Joining them was every variety of eccentric little model you ever saw in a post-war Italian movie; we didn't take notes, but all the romance of travel on the Continent was represented in those vehicles assembled on the asphalt between the hotel and the square surrounding the Flood brownstone.

Almost as interesting as the cars were the people who began to show up. The luncheon party crowd accumulated as the sun crept higher in the sky, and since the event would double as a block party for members of the Nob Hill community association, we had the opportunity to see select members of that insular world of San Francisco society. Lean old dowagers and their younger counterparts alike had arrayed themselves in the sort of boutique resort wear you find only in certain sections of Nieman Marcus and stores in Palm Springs, Palm Beach, Santa Barbara or St. Helena...lots of appliqued and sequined blouses and jackets, garish Capri pants over matching stilleto heels, big gold bangles hanging on wrists, ears and necks...short, short skirts, big floppy hats in day-glo hues, logo-covered purses. They talked of parties, real estate prices, the hired help, and all of the shortcomings endemic to each category.

At the same time, the Mille Miglia's hired help worked on the cars. The single most friendly personality on Nob Hill that day was Conrad Stevenson, an ace mechanic from Berekely who had been retained to make the kind of emergency repairs necessary to old vehicles. Unlike so many of the car owners, he good naturedly answered every question asked, even as he reassembled somebody's carburetor. He informed the tourists, placated the car owners who wanted his help next, and figured out where to send his assistant to get this or that obscure component, all the while expertly fitting parts together, screwing and wrenching with a ready smile available when appropriate.

Ex-Mayor Willie Brown strolled around nonchalantly greeting wellwishers from under his Borsalino hat, killing time before he had to go to work and provide a little color commentary on the event for the local TV station that now partly employs him. He lives in a stately apartment house opposite the Fairmont, and on this home turf he gloried in his status as neighbor, celebrity and wise man. He is as glib a man as ever walked the earth, and his unflappable facility of being able to field articulately any question, hostile or friendly, is truly remarkable. And then he stopped to tell a story of the last election that demonstrated the quality.

It seems that he served as a pundit for NBC, and early in the evening, when everyone predicted a Kerry victory, Brown dissented. Apparently, other experts had made predictions of certain races around the country that turned out to be badly flawed, and, according to Brown, it indicated widespread misjudgment of what was really happening. Just before a station break, he offered his own opinion that President Bush would keep his job.

You should have heard Chris Matthews and those people, said Brown. They were falling all over themselves telling me that I had to make it clear that that was my opinion alone when we went back on air.

Within an hour, though, reality had set in and Bush proved to be the winner.

They were all over me again, said Brown, but now I was the big expert.

By then, the luncheon under the portico was well underway; we limited ourselves to liberal servings of the Sterling Merlot and the bite size-canolis, consisting of a flakey crust filled with a fresh, creamy filling, dipped in dark chocolate and dusted with pistachio. After joining a couple of young women at one of the tables, we shared enough small talk to determine that they detested the '50s Italian pop music suffusing that end of Huntington Square; the selections seemed utterly charming to us, but such is the generation gap. Nonetheless, we departed with a great sense of thoughtless contentment; only later did the irony of this venue sink in.

The Fairmont Hotel was founded at the turn of the 20th Century by the daughters of James Fair, one of the great Bonanza Kings who developed and partly owned the richest silver mines in Virginia City's Comstock Lode, perhaps the most stupendous deposit of concentrated treasure ever found. Their wayward brother, Charly, bought some of the first cars ever to drive the streets of San Francisco; he died driving a Mercedes after an accident in a race outside of Paris, along with his wife, a former brothel owner. Typifying the sorts of litigation that entangled almost all of those first San Francisco fortunes, the disposition of the estate had to wait for a trial in which it was important to determine whether he or his spouse died first; witnesses to the accident offered conflicting stories as to when each actually gave up the ghost. Legions of relatives awaited the outcome as the public revelled in yet another bizarre display of greedy legatees fighting over the bones of their kin. The event in question wasn't much time removed from the hundredth anniversary of the demise of Charly Fair and his colorful mate.

The rally ended the following Friday at the Sonoma Mission Inn on the outskirts of its namesake town. Another pleasantly sunny afternoon greeted us, accompanied by dozens of local school children bearing signs lauding the drivers and their efforts. The cars assembled in a nearby parking lot, where we had the opportunity to scrutinize vehicles that had not earlier been evident on Nob Hill.

Here we got to see the '34 Bugatti roadster in the marque's signature blue, and an equivalently antique Maserati, with a similar configuration of open wheels and simple, functional body, in this case painted a deep maroon; word had it that the former was worth a million, the latter, two or three times that. But the stars of the lot for us were a pair of mid-'50s Maserati sedans, presenting timeless designs of clean lines and lush interiors; allegedly, one of them started life as the personal car of one of the Agnellis, the family that founded Fiat in 1899.

We retired, finally, toward the hotel lobby for a glass of wine, and on the way we encountered the individual supposedly responsible for public relations; he proved to be as unwelcoming as many of the entrants in the rally. For if there was a single, consistent off-note throughout the affair, it was the casual disdain with which so many of the car afficionados treated the people who had come to look at their vehicles. Surely many of the questions revealed an ignorance of the history of the cars, their technologies and the rally, but one presumes that a little friendly patience and grace might have found a place somewhere in their demeanors. Generally, it was lacking. A pained forbearance characterized most of these encounters, and it did little to encourage further dialog.

Later, we discussed the issue with a friend who himself dabbled in exotic cars at one time, and he readily knew the attitude and approved.

You get tired of answering stupid questions for idiots, he explained. I know just how they feel.

He regularly displays that same casual disdain in his dealings with those he considers inferiors, ever ready with a snide remark, a cruel put down or the snub of a non-response.

The cars, and their many modest admirers, deserved better.


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