This Alfa 6C 2300 Mille Miglia Spider is a concours‑winner turned racer

Alfa 6C 2300s tend to be far more Cartier Style et Luxe than racing overalls and oversteer. Indeed, this 1938 Touring-bodied Spider was a class winner at the Festival of Speed concours 10 years ago. 

Which is why the astonishing sight of its flowing lines and impressive bulk made it one of the jaw-droppers of 76MM – not just parked up in the paddock, with its incongruous racing number painted on the side, but also dicing with the Merc SSKs, Bugattis and Bentleys in the Caracciola Sportwagenrennen. 

In fact, it is sportier than it looks. It was built in 1938 as a competition one-off with lightweight, tuned straight six and an open Touring body. There’s even an MM in its name, the car having come home first in class and ninth overall in the 1938 Mille Miglia. It’s also a winner of the Pescara Six Hours, one of the more challenging races of the era. 

The car’s enthusiastic owner for the past 10 years is Pierre Mellinger; previously it was owned by British racing driver and team owner John Coombs, he of the famous former Jaguar dealership in Guildford.

Pierre is the car’s greatest fan and delights in both showing it – Pebble Beach and Chantilly as well as Goodwood – and racing it. Events have included the Le Mans Classic and three Mille Miglia reruns, with a fourth planned for this year which will be the 80th anniversary of the car’s debut in the 1000 Miles epic.

“It is far more a grand tourer than a track car, a car in which it is very easy to do 500km in a day,” Pierre tells us. It was designed to compete in the Italian Nazionale category of the 1930s where modified Italian cars took part in long-distance road events and hillclimbs. “Circuit racing was for voiturettes, not cars like the 2300.”

Today Pierre delights in putting it on track, believing it to be the first such 6C 2300 to compete in historic racing. Certainly, it has never raced at Goodwood before. 76MM also marked Pierre Mellinger’s race debut here. 

How did he get on? Pierre and the Alfa weren’t exactly at the sharp end, but, as he says, “I enjoyed it immensely. It’s not a nimble car on a circuit but the engine has a lot of torque and it’s very easy to drive.

“I said to Jochen Mass (driving the Mercedes SSK) before the race, ‘you are going to lap me’. But Jochen just said he would never do that…’your car is too nice’. 

“So we arrive at Woodcote side by side and I wave him past, but Jochen stays back, and true to his word says ‘after you’. The cars are side by side heading into the corner and we are there saying ‘no, after you’ to each other!”

How very English. 

Photography by Tom Shaxson