Targa Florio 2024: The Legend Lives On

PART 1 Facts and Numbers

The Targa Florio in Sicily is a must-see at least once in a lifetime. But how can you participate in the Targa Florio?

The Application Process

To be straight: It is much easier to take part in the Targa Florio as a racing team than in the Mille Miglia, which takes months-upon-months of application. In principle, anyone who owns a registered car that meets the tender criteria can apply.  

Which classic cars are allowed to race in the Targa Florio Classica?

Only vehicles that have an ACI Sport approval or are registered in the registry of the ACI storico and were built no later than 1978 are allowed to take part in the Targa Florio Classica. If you have a vehicle that meets these requirements, nothing stands in the way of your application. The rush for the Targa Florio cannot be compared to that for the Mille Miglia: Many of the correctly submitted applications are accepted. The participation fee of around 4,000€ per team is also within reach compared to the "Mille Miglia". Without sufficient knowledge of Italian, however, the registration process can become the first unexpected hurdle.

The Route of the Targa Florio

Every year, the Palermo Automobile Club, the patron of the event, changes the route of the Targa Florio, the rally date itself is usually confirmed at the end of January. However, there are some key points surround the race:

1. The starting gun will be shot in Palermo. The technical vehicle inspection in downtown Palermo at the "Museo Storico dei Motori e dei Meccanismi" is the first highlight of the event and a great opportunity to see the racing cars up close.

2. The opening ceremony in front of the Teatro Massimo in Palermo in the evening is pure Mediterranean-chaos; loud, crowded, and full of gusto - all-in-all very impressive, another "must see".

3. The heart of the Targa Florio is the Circuito delle Madonie with its 900 bends.

4. The Targa Florio is not a circuit like in the Mille Miglia but a rally. You come back to Palermo every day and start again from there the next morning. South-eastern Sicily with Taormina and Catania is too far away from Palermo, but the organizers keep coming up with new routes.

A classic route is the trip to the southwest to Trapani, the home of the Florio family with a visit to the Florios salt pans and wineries. This route is not included in the road book every year. Another variant leads across the island, past the notorious residences of Mafia members to the southern coast of Sicily near Noto .

The route to the "Madonie" mountains, which is still an essential part of the Targa Florio Classica, is indispensable in the road book with Nostalgic too. 

The Road Book and the Targa Florio Rule Book

If you have managed to get a place on the Targa Florio, you should familiarize yourself with the rally's rulebook.

You have probably already taken part in a classic car rally. So, the Targa Florio works pretty much along the same principles:

• Every morning, the teams start according to the year of construction of the vehicle (the oldest vehicles start first ) in predefined vehicle categories at short intervals in Palermo.
• There is a Roadbook with so-called "Chinese characters" that shows you the way along the routes.
• There are time controls, transit controls, announcements and secret measuring points for the drives.
• The team that collects the fewest penalty points wins the race, i.e. masters all the tests with the greatest possible precision. 

Which tests have to be taken by particular racers and where, can be found in the road books that is given to each team.

We have been offering this unique travel experience for many years. Every year it is the first trip that is fully booked.

You can experience the Targa Florio with Nostalgic in a more stylish and much more relaxed way.

With Nostalgic you will experience an exciting journey in the northwest of Sicily on the trail of the myth of Targa Florio. Of course, there is still time for petrol talks in Piazza Verdi, where the grand opening ceremony in front of the Teatro Massimo traditionally takes place. At the wheel of a Nostalgic Alfa Romeo classic, the road book takes you along beautiful coastal roads and into small Sicilian towns where time seems to have stood still. On the third day we leave Palermo and go through blooming lemon groves to where the Targa Florio began in 1906, on the "Gran Circuito delle Madonie" , then we reach the glamorous seaside resort of Cefalú where the journey ends.

Prepare yourself for an extraordinary journey in one of the most exciting corners of Italy, which you can experience from one of the most unusual perspectives: at the wheel of an Alfa Romeo Giulia Spider. The Targa Florio routes are made for the sporty, agile Alfa Spider and are even more fun if you can share them with the participants of the Targa Florio and the Ferrari Challenge participants.

Starting numbers were raffled in the early days of the car races. According to original tales of the Targa Florio, the Alfa Romeo driver Ugo Sivocci pulled the start number 13 at the 14th edition of the Targa Florio in 1923. Out of superstition, he is said to have had put green shamrocks on the racing cars of all four Alfa Romeo drivers . His teammate Antonio Ascari was on the home stretch in an Alfa Romeo RL when he ran out of fuel. Until the mechanics who were rushing out of the pits had refueled the car, Sivocci sped past the finish line in his more powerful 3.2-liter Alfa Romeo RL. A brilliant double victory for Alfa Romeo, and the green 4-leaf clover(Quadrifoglio Verde), it has been retained as a lucky charm and later used to mark particularly sporty models from the Milanese manufacturer. However, not all victories could be celebrated forever, unfortunately, for Sivocci - in September 1923 he had a fatal accident at the Italian Grand Prix in Monza, without a clover on his Alfa Romeo.

Is there an alternative to the Targa Florio?

Among the well-known classic car rallies, the Targa Florio ranks more in the "Insider's Tip" category. Sicily is not exactly around the corner for many wanna-be participants, and transporting your own classic car there is quite time-consuming. Foreign automobile manufacturers leave the involvement here to Italian brands such as Ferrari and Fiat predominantly.

The Mille Miglia is clearly the absolute number one among the classic car events when it comes to media hype and highlights. Le Mans Classic and the Gran Prix Historic in Monaco are also several sizes larger than the Targa Florio in terms of media coverage.

But it is precisely the low media coverage that makes the Targa Florio special, here everything is real and authentic: the rugged and exotic landscape of Sicily, the spontaneous enthusiasm of the locals along the way. Nowhere else do you meet people who identify so strongly with racing and are proud of the good old days when a much larger racing circuit hosted a rendezvous in the "Madonie" mountains and the winners of the "Circuito delle Madonie" became heroes.

The 24hour of Le Mans Classic 

Is Le Mans even more exciting than the Targa Florio? We think you have to experience both events and decide for yourself: the sonorous roar of the endurance racing cars on a mild summer night at the Circuit de la Sarthe in Le Mans of northwestern France, as well as the roar of the Pre-war cars under palm trees in Palermo at the Targa Florio.

Do you think we're right? Decide for yourself!

PART II History

In 1906, Vincenzo Florio fulfilled his lifelong dream. The Sicilian patron, scion of what was then probably the richest family in the south, who had become rich with tuna, marsala and real estate, had roads built on his extensive estates in order to be able to organize his own car race. In the mountains east of Palermo, on unpaved gravel roads, the 140 km stretch of the "Grande Circuito delle Madonie" led from sea level to 1200 meter high passes, and this was all at a time when the automobile was just beginning.

The name of the race comes from the plaque (Italian "Targa") which the winner received as a prize, and of course the family name of the financier Vincenzo Florio. Long before the Mille Miglia or the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the "Targa Florio" was one of the most important car races in the world and it wasn't just a rendezvous for the small elite who believed in the automobile and its future, but also a stage for automobile factories that vied for victory. At the beginning of the twenties, the then-racing department of Mercedes-Benz sent dozens of drivers, mechanics and cars to Sicily a month before the start of the race to prepare for the "Targa Florio". Similar to the "Mille Miglia", the "Targa Florio" was also stopped after a serious accident, and years later relaunched as a historic revival.

The race was held 60 times in the Madonia Mountains. One of the great heroes of the "Targa Florio" was Nino Vaccarella, who only recently died in September 2021. The Palermo-born teacher, and later headmaster, won the "Targa Florio" three times in an Alfa Romeo and in 1964 at the Le Mans 24-hour Race, he won in a Ferrari for the Ferrari-works team. In this way he sparked an incredible sense of local patriotism in Sicily, which made the Targa Florio unique.

The Ultimate Challenge for Racing Sports

Imagine the racing cars speeding through the tight hairpin bends of the Madonie Mountains at top speeds of up to 300 km/h. Thanks to the rapid technical development, the vehicles became faster and faster and the danger for racing and spectators increased. The organizers shortened the "Grande Circuito" to "Medio" and finally to "Piccolo Circuito", but this still had 900 corners.

Like other races of its time, the "Targa Florio" was held on open country roads and led through tiny towns, past isolated farmsteads in the Madonie mountains, where the snow only disappears in late spring. Occasional only bales of straw were placed on the track to protect the drivers in the event of an impact. On the eve of the races, so-called "Banditori" were sent out on the track to draw attention to themselves with drums and to ask the rural population to lock up children and pets so that the race could be carried out without disruption.

In the 1970s the safety precautions got a little better, but only for the race itself. Helmut Marko remembered an absolutely crazy race in 1972 in which he set the lap record. Nevertheless, Ferrari had to admit defeat with his Alfa Romeo. He said "during the training runs there was normal everyday traffic on the track, and village policemen were standing in very slow places who issued us parking tickets for" speeding violations ". There were practically no crash barriers along the track and the crowds during the race were unimaginable. You had to brake into them Drive in crowds and trust everyone to jump aside at the last moment. "

Folk hero Nino Vaccarella in a Ferrari in the Madonia Mountains at the 1967 Targa Florio

Maybe We Should Have Been a bit More Scared

The great Nino Vaccarella, 3-time winner of the Targa Florio, and Sicilian folk hero remembered the glory days with mixed feelings. "We weren't afraid at the time, although we knew that around every bend a domestic pig or chicken on the street could end the race, or in the worst case also your own life. The enthusiasm and fanatic passion of the spectators carried us and made us take ever greater risks during each run."

Vaccarella had the great advantage that he lived in Sicily and knew every single turn by heart. Every weekend and many evenings he drove through the Madonia mountains. He was a perfectionist and was one of the few pilots who could remember the entire street course, making him almost unbeatable in his home mountains. 

Nino Vaccarella, Sicilian folk hero, was very lucky and had no serious accidents, passing away in September 2021 at the age of 88. His son, unfortunately, had a serious accident at the Targa Florio Rally in 1993 and has been confined to a wheelchair ever since.

Birth of an Iconic Porsche Targa Sports Car

Races are won with the corners and not on the straights. Word quickly got around in the motorsport scene that there is a circuit in Sicily that actually only consists of curves. Whoever could win in the Madonia Mountains could win all over the world. All the important racing teams wanted to be part of the Targa Florio and take home the victory. Small, agile racing cars had a clear advantage here. Alfa Romeo was able to enter the list of winners 10 times easily.

Only one sports car manufacturer was more successful at the Targa Florio than Alfa Romeo and had a lasting impact on racing: Porsche. Legendary drivers and spectacular sports cars have established the reputation of the sports cars from Zuffenhausen not least through victories at the Targa Florio. Jo Siffert, Vic Elford, Herbert Müller, Hans Herrmann were able to win the Targa Florio for Porsche, motor sport legends such as the Porsche 550 Spyder, Porsche 904 Carrera GTS, the 906 Carrera 6, the 908 or the 911 Carrera RSR triumphed in the Madonia Mountains. In 1956, the young company from Zuffenhausen opened the first big chapter in its own racing history with the surprise success at the Targa Florio by Umberto Maglioli in a Porsche Spyder 550 A. Porsche succeeded in achieving overall victory with a racing car from the flyweight class. Since then, many Porsche series vehicles have had the word "Targa" in their name in reference to the great successes at the Targa Florio.

All Targa Florio Winners from 1907 - 1977

A total of 60 races were held at the Targa Florio during it's first era, many of which were very important because they were part of the World Touring Car Championship. Porsche, Alfa Romeo and Ferrari were the dominant automakers who could claim the most victories at the Targa Florio. Big names like the unforgettable Tazio Nuvolari, Mille Miglia record holder Sir Stirling Moss, Jo Siffert or Wolfgang Graf Berghe von Trips were just a handful of stars that drove the Targa Florio. With the triple winner Nino Vaccarella, the Targa Florio had its own David versus Goliath story: the fearless local hero who put fear into the big names at the Targa Florio.