Sometimes, knowing someone results is a surprise. I’ve known Mike Marsh for a number of years. He created the EuroFest car and motorcycle shows that have been very popular with Deep South enthusiasts for a number of years. A few months ago, I received an email inviting me to a send-off party for John and Julie Herlihy, who were about to fly to Italy to run their 1953 Jaguar XK120 OTS Roadster in the Mille Miglia. Herlihy – that name sounded familiar, so I looked at the article about the Mille Miglia WarmUP. Turns out they had won the WarmUp in 2019 in their Jaguar. I knew I needed to interview them when they returned to the U.S. Anyone who could win the WarmUp was likely to do well in the Mille Miglia. Little did I know that they had done the Mille Miglia before and had done quite well. The interview was scheduled for shortly after their return at their lake front home.
Vintage Racecar (VR) – Who are the Herlihys and how did you get involved with sports cars?
John Herlihy (JoH) – When Julie and I started dating, I began getting interested in Ferraris. Our friend Ed Wettach lived here and owned Ferrari of Atlanta. Julie and I flew over to Atlanta in Ed’s plane to pick out colors for a new car, and I said it’s like being married to a beautiful woman and not being able to make love to her – I don’t get to drive my cars. He said, don’t worry, we’ll get you a racecar. I bought the 360 Challenge car [currently in their garage] and got invited to do the Challenge Club Racing (CCR) series. Julie followed me around all the race tracks, but still, it was kind-of a one sided deal. The same friend who created the CCR series got interested in the Mille – he did it in 2017. He came back and organized a small rally in New Orleans. We took the black Ferrari down to do it. Julie and I, navigator and driver, did horrible. But we were hooked because we found something we could do together. That’s how we got from street cars to racecars to rally cars.
Julie Herlihy (JuH) – When we flew to Atlanta with Ed, we were picking out colors for a new Ferrari. We got it all done, and I flew home early for my daughter’s award ceremony at school. By the time John got home the next day at noon, he had postponed delivery of the car we had picked the colors for, and he had traded our 430 for the Scuderia upstairs; he had agreed to buy a racecar.
VR – See what happens when you leave him alone?
JuH – I know. I never left him alone with Ed Wettach again. Ed guided us when John started racing, then we met John Houghtaling, who started CCR, and that’s when we really got hooked.
VR – How and why did you acquire the Jaguar XK 120?
JoH – It all goes back to Houghtaling again. He decided that would be a good car for his initial Mille run, so he bought one with a pedigree, thinking he could get in. I think it was 2016 – he did not get in. In 2017, he got in, and in 2018, he invited his friends to join. He bought three more Jags in varying conditions, and I drove with a friend in one. He was also a CCR racer, so it was two Type As. We had a mechanical, and finished way down in the standings. It was not a fun experience because navigating is hard. You have to concentrate. Neither of us was good at that. We were good at driving but not at navigating. We’d swap places, but we’d get lost. Julie was there and said she wished she could have done it with me. We got on a train from Brescia to Venice to take a few days to decompress, and Julie kept saying how much she’d like to do it. So, I called John and asked about the white car that another fellow had driven. He had rented it and was not going to buy it, so I asked how much. Houghtaling gave me the price, and I bought it. Julie committed to do it with me. That’s how we got the car. I had driven one, and I liked it, but there wasn’t a lot of thought on our part. We became part of the group. The drivers were John and Franco from New Orleans, Julie and I from Jackson, and four other Jags from all over the country running for one shop in New Orleans – Manual Shift. For four days, you’re a rock star; it’s Mardi Gras for four days!
VR – The Mille Miglia is a regularity run – with transit stages and stages where you have to hit the exact time for that distance, right?
JuH – An example of a PC (PC is Italian, and roughly translates to “time trial”) – you go .45 kilometers in 1.14 minutes, then you go .14 kilometers in .7 minutes. The end of the first one in the series is the beginning of the second one. To know where you are in the PCs is a struggle. When you push the button to end the first PC, it starts the timer for the second PC. It happens really quickly.
JoH – She has to stay on every minute. I can be kind-of brain dead, but she has to stay on all the time. It’s not that hard, it’s just hard to be good at it. The people who win it – their error is .3 second. Being able to do it accurately is a joint effort. Julie has to hit the button at exactly the right moment. If she makes an error on the button punch, it makes no difference how good I’m driving. I have a computer that tells me how far behind I am, so I’m looking at that, she’ll remind me of distance or time, and in the last ten seconds, she counts down to five and stops. I pick it up in my head from there, because the year before, when you count down out loud 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, you hit the button whether you’re there or not. If the hose is ten feet ahead or behind you, you hit the button. We were horrible. We practiced that, and it gets back to the concentration. The driving is easy. In the regularity part, your input is cross the line at zero on the second. It’s much more intense for the navigator. I’ve sat where she sits, and it’s impossible. Last year, we missed one turn, and it was my fault. This year we missed two, and one was my fault.
VR – that’s what they were doing at the WarmUp.
JoH – Yes, they were particularly hard because they were short.
JuH – We had some this year that when you finished one PC, you were under 10 seconds for the next one, so I’d have to start counting at 8 rather than 10. It’s fun until something goes wrong. [In Preparation] we had our mechanics set up PCs in a parking lot in New Orleans, and we did them 2-300 times trying to get it right.
VR – You were listed as “Veterans” at the 1000 Miglia Warmup in October 2019, which you won, apparently because you have run the MM before. How many times had you run the event prior to this year?
JoH – I’ve been three times. Julie and I have been twice. 2019, Julie and I won the USA Cup.
JuH – The first time I ever did it we won the USA Cup. It was so unexpected, it was surreal.
JoH – We had a goal of getting there and be close. We averaged .3. We were the best U.S. team. [In 2019] we didn’t do the first day of the WarmUp, and we should have. We won it, but just barely.
JuH – At the previous 2018 Warm Up race we performed very poorly in driving rain and cold – the season’s first Nor’easter – and our Jaguar suffered a hole in the radiator toward the end of the race. We limped to the ceremonial finish at the Italian Ambassador’s beautiful DC home – cold, wet and billowing smoke from underneath the hood – and had the dubious and memorable honor of loading our smoking car on a flatbead trailer in his entrance drive. We were unable to participate in the 2020 Mille Miglia because of Covid. Also because of Covid, most of our New Orleans team didn’t go this year, so we were on our own.
VR: Did you find driving in Italy to be a challenge compared to the U.S.?
JuH – What I learned about Italy is that driving on the autostrada, when they say Exit 3, there may be three Exit 3s in a row. There’s not 3A, 3B, and 3C, so the first exit 3 I saw, I said we go that way. Turns out it was the second exit 3. John put the coordinates in his cellphone, we navigated back close to the start, and took off again.
JoH – It’s not like the States – you can’t turn around, and get back on…uh oh. I gave it two tries to get back on, said screw it, and got out the phone. Back at the start, we confused them because we were a low number. We fixed the computer, and off we went again. We lost ten minutes, but it’s insignificant. The way they do it is they give you much more time to get to the next stop than you need. The PCs, the regularity part, takes up time. There could be traffic jams, and you have to wait to do your PC. Without problems, you’ll get to your time stage with plenty time to sit down for a leisurely lunch. But the afternoon stage can go until midnight. Day two, you start at 8:00am and finish in Rome at midnight, cross-eyed.
VR – You didn’t do as well as you hoped this year, what happened?
JuH – The race was run backwards this year, so the race was coming into Rome on Day 1. We had had a beautiful driving day on Day 1, and we were within an hour of the finish line, and coming down out of the mountains the car was losing momentum. Our mechanics were right behind us in a van and a station wagon. We were on the side of the road for four hours. Italians came out – they’re alongside the road all along the route. A couple of old guys stood there for hours. They helped us get the flatbed and have the car taken into Rome. The next morning we thought we were out of the race.
VR – what broke?
JoH – We sheared an axle. Initially, I thought it had jumped out of gear, or that I had done in the clutch. It would go into gear, then the revs would spike when I tried to get on the gas. So, we coasted in thinking we had gotten oil on the clutch – that wasn’t it. We jacked the car up – all four wheels off the ground, and the wheels would turn. Back on the ground, it sounded like we had stripped a gear in the differential. So, we took the car to Rome thinking we were out of the race. The mechanics pulled the axle and found it sheared off. You could see the dark place where it had been cracked before. I told Julie, “This is not bad. This is not good, but it’s not bad.”
JuH – He took it very well. With all the preparation you have to do to document the car, and there were issues with the documentation, and there were issues with insurance. We had to make arrangements to have the car flown to Italy – usually the team in New Orleans handles that. Then we had to go through scrutineering. And on the very first day, we thought we were out. I was having a very hard time with that, but John said, “You know, engines break.” We really did not expect to get back in the race.
JoH – The crew was amazing.
JuH – They have a shop in Rome.
JoH – Our team this year was Scuderia Sports Zagato. We brought in mechanics from Rome we had used before, so we had our own mechanics – the Rizza brothers, who have a restoration shop in Rome. They were able to renew the axle and put us back in the race. We joined the race again in our normal starting point the next day, even though we had many penalty points. It’s a challenge just like racing is a challenge. To me, racing had a technical aspect to it, you have to put your wheel exactly at the right place. The penalty for not showing up [at a check point] is 12,000 points. With our mechanical problem, we finished with [something like] 299,000 points.
VR – Julie, you mentioned difficulties with the preparations, anything future entrants should know about?
JuH – There is so much to tell about the MM – the rules/rating system for cars; the impossibly Italian scrutineering system which requires documentation that apparently changes every year; the timing/scoring system; the all-important time trials that were staged among other places this year on rough cobblestone switchbacks of an ancient castle and on gravel roads so dusty that the finish lines were undetectable; the Tuscan towns where we pass through stone-walled town centers where we were welcomed sometimes by bands, beautiful women in costume, or whatever that particular town is most proud of. The Italians love cars and for four days we are encouraged to drive through red lights, push through roundabouts and create center lanes on small two lane roads, flying past oncoming traffic that we can truly reach out and touch from our open car. The Italian Polizia, on motorcycles, blast around us and motion for us to follow – if we can keep up. Each car must pass certain points within an assigned one minute interlude – neither early nor late. Managing over 400 cars and frazzled drivers in those situations is … colorful. This Italian passion for cars results in large groups in towns/cities and small groups across the Italian countryside throughout the race. Many bring their favorite old cars and park them along the way, setting up tables with food and wine to watch the progress of the vintage cars. The history of the MM is also fantastic – it was originally a no-holds-barred race that was run beginning in 1927 and ending in 1957 because of deaths of participants and spectators.
VR – Sounds incredible!
JuH – it’s a beautiful race. In an open air car, which have a lot of disadvantages, the views are incredible. And the Italians love cars. By the end of the day, our car was full of gifts people had given us.
JoH – They give you baskets of strawberries!
JuH – John said we could not take any more gifts. In Parma, they were handing me breadsticks with ham wrapped around them, and John told me not to take them. I reached out with both hands and got one in each hand. John kept saying to throw them out, but I ate them as fast as I could.
VR – Any interesting stories from the two times you ran the Mille?
JuH – The Franco story? [Julie looked at John, and he nodded.] Before Day 4, we knew we’d win the USA Cup if we were consistent and didn’t screw up. We got through all the PCs, and felt pretty good. All we had to do is finish the drive into Brescia. So, we followed the route directions, and they took us to an air force base.
JoH – We roll into the airbase, and they told us to turn off cameras and cellphones.
JuH – And John is looking at me like – these look like PCs. I said they’re not in the computer and not in the book. There are no PCs – these aren’t PCs. Suddenly these are bad, since I don’t know about them, and it’s my job to know about them. John said, well we have some points we can lose, so he just drove through them. He kept saying how many points we had lost as we drove through the PCs and knew we had dropped to second in the USA Cup. I was puzzled about why there were PCs. John looked through the route book and in the computer, and they weren’t in there. He asked if I had gotten any addendums – they’re used when they change the course – and I hadn’t gotten any. There was one about a party, and I read it to him. John texted a member of our team from New Orleans and asked what these were. He replied that they were another set of PCs and “we think we nailed them.” John asked how they knew about them, and Franco texted “it was an addendum; we gave it to Julie.” They were jokers and agreed to say that. Then they were going to text back 30 seconds later saying “just kidding,” but we never got that text. I felt terrible, and it made the ride to the finish line terrible.
JoH – I knew better, but I could not convince her. She had to sign for the addendum about the party, so she would have had to sign for any about PCs. She was convinced she lost the race for us. As we drove into the parking lot, John and Franko came over to congratulate us. I asked “for what?” They were puzzled, and I told them we had blown all the PCs. He said, “I was just kidding.” They were practice PCs for another race.
JuH – John was great about it, he said that it would give them a reason to come back next year.
VR – Any stories from this year?
JuH – This year, three cars are sent off every minute. I don’t know if it was an unruly group of cars, or if the places were different this year – running backwards. There was all kinds of chaos with all the cars trying to get to the start. Pushing and shoving, honking and yelling.
JoH – There’s time to get there, but the last thing you want to do is assume there’s time to get there. So, you arrive early.
JuH – In Bologna, they parked us all in a paddock area and said for us to go eat dinner. We had learned our lesson, so we didn’t eat dinner; we got in our car and got as close as reasonable to where you get the time card.
JoH – Usually they wave the time penalty for all the stops but Brescia at the end. We kept asking if they were going to wave the time penalty, and no one knew. It was smelling like a rat. We could see the start from where we were, with an hour to go. We hoped a fence and got a couple glasses of red something.
JuH – We got some food and something to drink and sat in the car and ate. We inched forward, and there was still a question about whether we were going to cross in time. So I had to jump out of the car and went to the time stamp to present it at the right time. I’d never had to do that before, but I had to do it three times in this race. As we were leaving, there was a huge revolt. All the cars that were not getting through and were looking at penalties just laid on their horns.
JoH – it’s always something.
VR – Do you plan on doing it again?
JuH – Oh yeah. Even though we were out of the running, we had a blast. It was so much fun.
JoH – We’ll do better. That was a freak thing. The car is well prepared.
JuH – Our mechanics took it personally. Our mechanics in Italy and in New Orleans worked together to figure out the problem and get us back on the road.
JoH – we’re a good team, and a lot of it is being able to get along. And Julia is so good. We do it because I like crazy ideas. [ Julie is a lawyer, and John is an engineer. Both are pilots, so attention to detail comes naturally.]
VR – Are you going to do any other events?
JuH – We have left our Jaguar with Rizza Classic, our mechanical team in Rome. The Rizzas are a family affair with a spectacular modern garage in Rome where we saw an elderly man actually hand-stitching upholstery during our recent visit. Needless to say, we got to know all three Rizza brothers, their wives, children and Papa this year. The Rizzas are taking our Jaguar to a car show in Italy in the next week or two. Italians love their cars and apparently showing a car that raced in the Mille Miglia is of interest. We plan to return to Italy in October to race in the Targa Florio – a race that originates in Palermo, Sicily.
JoH – It’s different than the MM, since you start and finish at the same hotel.
VR – We have one last question we ask all our interviewees: if you were walking on the beach and tripped on something that turned out to be an ancient lamp, and, after rubbing it, a genie appeared and offered you any one car you would want to have – at no cost to you – what would that car be?
JoH – 1937 BMW 328. They are beautiful cars.
JuH – Just give me the Jaguar SK 120 with a roof, that’s all.
VR – John and Julie, thank you for talking with us. We hope you do well at the Targe Florio and in next year’s Mille Miglia. FORZA!
