RURAL Sicily isn’t somewhere you’d associate with a race that for decades saw the best drivers – and the likes of Porsche, Ferrari and Mercedes – going wheel-to-wheel on roads that in the main are no wider, and are in significantly worse condition, than a typical British B-road.
And yet from 1906 to 1973, the island’s Targa Florio attracted all the great drivers – Nuvolari, Fangio and Hill to name but a few – and teams as part of the same series that included the Le Mans 24 Hours. By the early 1970s, cars capable of 350km/h-plus on Le Mans’ Mulsanne Straight were competing on Sicily’s poorly maintained public roads.
The iconic race was the idea of aristocrat Vincenzo Florio, a keen driver who wanted to run an event close to his home of Palermo on Sicily. The inaugural race took place in May 1906, and across 57
