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Earlier this month, I was fortunate enough to be invited to work with the Jaguar team on the 2008 Mille Miglia retrospective event. I was part of the support crew for NUB 120, the famous Alpine Rally winning and aluminium bodied XK 120, one of four Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust cars on this year’s Mille. Every competing car is followed by a support car, and this year those support cars were XF SV8s – which gave us a great opportunity to test Jaguar’s newest high-performance saloon on some very testing roads. You can read about the conclusions drawn from that ‘test’ in the Mille Magic feature starting on page 37, but what was of particular interest to me, aside from the driving experience itself, was how the Italians along the route reacted to the Jaguars, old and new. The simple answer is, they reacted to them with great enthusiasm. At every stop-off point for the competitors I was impressed at the number of Italians that not only took a great interest in NUB 120, but who also knew the significance of the car. However, given the nature of the event it’s only natural that the spectators who took the trouble to look at the route and visit the places where they knew the classics would be stopping were likely to be enthusiasts, so what was more interesting still was the reaction of people to the XF at our non-scheduled stops. These stops took place regularly as we generally tried to jump a little way ahead of NUB 120 and then parked up to see it come safely by, which meant numerous pauses outside cafes or at garages – wherever suited best. At each of these stops, a small crowd of people always gathered by the XF, keen to look around and inside the car. Everyone seemed to know what it was, and all seemed equally impressed. Knowing nods and murmurs of “Jagwaaare, Jagwaaare” were the order of the day!