The California Mille, a historic 1,000-mile race car tour of remote Northern California, now in its 15^th year, will assemble on Sunday, April 24, in front of the Fairmont Hotel. The now-traditional show will take place from noon until five, and will be the centerpiece of the Nob Hill Association’s cocktail party.

Cars on display include the 60 racers dating from the late ’20s, with none newer than 1957, that being the last year the original Italian Mille Miglia was run. An additional 50 luxury cars of the last 100 years will be displayed in Huntington Park and on the street surrounding the Pacific Union Club. These cars, selected by the organizers of the Palo Alto Concours d’Elegance, are those in which you’d have been proud to arrive at the Fairmont, back when they were new.

It’s no accident that this celebration of Italian motoring culture takes place in San Francisco. Our city is the gateway to the beautiful northwestern quadrant of California, which provides the best scenic drivers’ roads in the world. The event attracts entries from the U.K., Japan, Australia, South America and all parts of the U.S.

Many of these entrants have driven in the four other Mille Miglia events that take place each year. There’s the original in Italy that covers the 1000 miles from Brescia to Rome and back. The Mil Millas de la Republica Argentina starts in Bariloche and explores the Andes and Patagonia. La Festa Mille Miglia in Japan is a bit of a challenge for a foreigner, who must pay careful attention in order not to miss the secondary English language on road signs. The Melbourne Mille, in Victoria State, Australia, traverses a mix of ocean-front, wine country and mountains, much like our California route.

Nob Hill Gazette readers are invited to join us on the last Sunday in April, at the Fairmont Hotel, to share in the opening of the motorsport season.

How Motorheads Prepare For Spring

Among the motoring cognoscenti around the world, the place to be in early February is Paris at a unique show called Retromobile. About 30 years ago, a group of Bugatti enthusiasts decided to get together in mid-winter for a sort of swap meet. The gathering grew each year. Now Retromobile attracts hundreds of vendors, automotive artists, auto manufacturers, toy and model sellers, and about 100,000 visitors during its 10-day run at the Palais des Expositions at the Porte de Versailles.

This year, planning to visit friends in Warsaw, Prague and Strasbourg before going to Paris, I flew to Frankfurt to pick up the Audi A-3 turbo-diesel I’d reserved for this 4000 km. winter marathon.

I wanted to drive the 1200 km. from Germany to Warsaw, to see how things had changed in the 20 years since I last drove the route. The A-3 diesel was chosen because they’re fast, very economical of euro-priced fuel, and great to drive.

Because of the high risk of theft, car rental companies restrict the cars they’ll rent for travel to the eastern countries. The most desirable cars, such as Audi and Mercedes are on the “no eastern countries” list. They offered me a non-diesel Opel.

My expectations were not very high as I left Frankfurt in this Opel, a 1.6 liter VW Golf competitor. It takes a few kilometers to get used to the pace of autobahn driving, but as you do, you quickly leave behind the brain-dead, slow paced American approach to motoring. You appreciate why Cadillac brags about developing their latest models in Germany to make them “world-class.”

The little Opel, a middle-class car if there ever was one, quickly showed that it was “world-class” in its dynamic qualities, as it settled into a mechanically comfortable, wind-noise free 160-180 kph. (100-110 mph) autobahn pace.

I had planned to overnight in Wolfsburg, home to VW, about 400 km. from Frankfurt, and site of Autostadt, VW’s car museum. A Ritz Carlton Hotel on the VW factory grounds made for a superb first night in Europe.

Autostadt consists of several very contemporary and individualistic buildings. The main building is a general auto museum, with emphasis on VW. Other pavilions, each a unique architecture, are devoted to VW’s other car brands, which include Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Skoda and Seat. Very impressive and well worth a visit.

But why a Ritz Carlton on the grounds of an auto factory? Because many German customers like to pick up their new car at the factory. Deliveries are made seven days a week. One couple explained that they took the train 400 km from their home, stayed overnight, and would pick up their new VW on Sunday morning and drive home. The 800 euros they saved by taking factory delivery more than paid for a Ritz Carlton evening and their travel costs.

Back at the wheel of the Opel, I crossed the former East Germany on a hugely improved autobahn. The old east-west border control buildings that were so forbidding have disappeared without a trace!

The Polish border, at the Oder River, has changed, too. It’s a friendly welcome. Polish roads are quite OK now, comparable to roads in France in pre-autoroute days. There‘s some excessive modernization, as I discovered when a radar cop stopped me for exceeding the speed limit by 50 percent. In a dazzling display of diplomacy, expressed in fragments of English, German and Polish, I convinced the cops that this silver-haired law abider was very contrite, and they let me go.

A stay in Warsaw’s Marriott was more than satisfactory. But by way of confirming that standards in the new members of the European Union are rapidly catching up with the west, they charged $30 for overnight parking.

Continuing south to Krakow and east to Prague, I was pleased to see how acceptable the roads have gotten in recent years. You could comfortably plan to tour by road in Poland or the Czech Republic.

A VW Cabriolet For The Season

Having visited Wolfsburg, I was curious to try a recent VW, the new Beetle Turbo convertible, after I returned home. Although this model is not built in Germany, but at VW’s giant plant in Puebla, Mexico, it’s a thoroughly German car with all the good that implies.

Purists view this as a “girl’s car,” but I found it smart looking, powerful and altogether a very desirable car for anyone of any age. Try one, top down, for the ideal weekend in Monterey or Mendocino.

For more info on the Nob Hill Association cocktail party for the California Mille: 415-346-8720.