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Alfie, Pops and the Mille Miglia | Auto Classica
My son Alfie left for Italy last week.
He drove to Dover, crossed the Channel, and is now making his way south through France and into Switzerland before dropping down through the Alps into northern Italy. He's heading for Brescia, and he's doing it in a 1973 Series III Land Rover 88 he calls Pops.
The car was a project. Over the last six months, Alfie stripped it back completely and rebuilt it from the ground up. The bodywork is original, every scratch, every dent, every layer of patina earned honestly over 53 years - the recorded back story is another post! Everything underneath it is Alfie's work. Engine, running gear, electrics, interior. He knows every nut, bolt and rivet in it.
He left with a bag of tools that is almost entirely imperial.
Who Alfie is
Before building Pops, Alfie spent four years training properly.
He completed his apprenticeship through the Heritage Skills Academy, the route into the trade for people who want to work on cars that matter, gaining invaluable experience at the same time with Export 56, a specialist classic Porsche garage with a serious reputation among collectors and enthusiasts who care deeply about these cars.
Four years at Export 56. Working on important air-cooled Porsches. Learning not just how to fix them, but how to research and understand them.
Why Brescia
The 1000 Miglia is the oldest road race in the world. First run in 1927, revived in its current regularity form in 1977, it covers roughly 1,000 miles of Italian public road and is open only to pre-1957 cars with documented racing history. Around 400 cars enter each year. The entry list reads like a catalogue of the most significant vehicles ever built.
Alfie is not competing.
He's working.
Export56 are entering four Porsche 356's and a Healy 100 'S'. Rare, period-correct, exceptionally valuable cars. Alfie's role, which begins at the Zurich warm-up event before the field even reaches Brescia, is to keep those cars mechanically sound throughout. Whatever they need. Wherever they are. Whenever they need it.
That kind of responsibility is not given to someone who doesn't know what they're doing.
What comes next
Once the Mille Miglia is over, Alfie's plan is to bring Pops home via the old military tracks and mountain trails and campsites of the Alps. The long way back.
He'll be coming home via a network of former Italian defence tracks built in the 1930s to patrol the Alpine border, now largely forgotten at altitude, some unsealed, most unpaved. The kind of roads that were made for Pops.
When he gets home, he'll be joining Auto Classica.
In August 2026 we are opening Auto Classica Works, a dedicated workshop for combustion-engined cars built between 1948 and the turn of the century. Mechanical work (engine and gearbox), Servicing, MOT and race preparation. The marques we know best: Porsche, Aston Martin, Land Rover, Jaguar. Alfie will be running it.
We'll have more to say about that in the coming months.
For now, if you want to follow the journey, the drive through France, the Alps, the Mille Miglia itself, and whatever the mountains have planned for the way home Alfie is documenting it on Instagram.
Follow @_alfiecordes We'll send a proper update once he's back.
Nick Pauley is the founder and director of Auto Classica Storage Ltd, based just outside Milton Keynes. Auto Classica Works opens August 2026.
