The bones might creak a little more than those of his young counterpart, but Sir Stirling Moss could still show James Martin a thing or two about speed. Martin, though, might be able to teach Moss about owning one of the most valuable cars in the world.

The celebrity chef and would-be ballroom dancer will arrive tonight at the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome at the wheel of his £1million Maserati, one of 375 of the most opulent and expensive cars in the world taking part in the Mille Miglia, a legend in motor racing. The city-to-city race once captured the imaginations of generations of enthusiasts and schoolboys trying to visualise what it would be like whizzing between houses and on public roads at up to 170mph.

Martin won't find out because the present Mille Miglia is more a cavalcade than a race; Moss knows the experience only too well. He holds the record for the fastest run from Brescia, at the foot of the Alps in Lombardy, down to Rome, in the south, at an astonishing 97.96mph, made in 1955.

When Moss, 78, met Martin, 43 years his junior, in London a few days before this year's event, the chef with a passion for cars was keen to know how Moss could achieve a feat that even now modern racing drivers would marvel at. Moss, on the other hand, was just as anxious to know how Martin would steer his little Italian beauty over the roads of Italy and whether he was nervous about damaging it.

Martin is not taking any chances. He buys most of his classic cars, including the Maserati and a Jordan Formula One car, from Cars International, in London, and has hired three mechanics from the company to follow him along the route. His lovely A6GCS, built in 1948, is one of the original cars to have competed in the epic 1,000-mile dash through Italy. The race was one of those typical feats of derring-do that captivated the early racing drivers and their teams, dashing from city to city, throwing up clouds of dust on the potted roads as millions of Italians crowded the sides of the single-track roads.

It started in 1927 and ended as a race 30 years later when 14 people were killed, forcing the Italian authorities to end the great adventure by imposing restrictions on motor racing. But the Mille Miglia would not go away and has run as a crowd-pleaser ever since, a chance for Italians to revel in their history and car nuts to enjoy some of the most exotic machinery made. The modern version attracts big-name sponsors, such as Jaguar from Britain, which has sent its own classic fleet of C- and D-Types, as well as two XK120s.

However beautiful and however fast these motors may be, none will match Moss's historic feat, one that will probably never be repeated. Moss, usually described as the greatest driver never to be Formula One world champion, gave much of the credit for the record run to Denis Jenkinson, his co-driver. Jenkinson, bearded and cerebral, came up with what was then the innovative idea of taking a roll of paper on which directions were written.

Martin has in the co-driver's seat a petite blonde, Sarah Bennett-Baggs, a mean racer herself, who is competing in this year's Porsche Club Championship in a pink 911. The only paper will be notes for the forthcoming book about the race and for a BBC film crew, because there will be the inevitable television documentary to follow.

The pair are among 24 British crews in an array of lovely cars, from a Frazer-Nash to an Aston Martin and a Bentley. The drivers are almost as exotic with Jean Alesi, once of the Ferrari Formula One team, expected and Mika Hakkinen, the two-time Formula One world champion, driving a beautiful Mercedes 300SL Gran Turismo. There are royalty and executives from some of the most famous brands in the world. In fact, the Mille Miglia is more a beauty pageant than the gritty motor race that Moss contested.

A Roman legend

- The Mille Miglia was started in 1927 by a group of aristocrats and businessmen because Brescia had lost the Italian Grand Prix to Monza, and was run over a figure-of-eight route to Rome and back over 1,000 Roman miles.

- The race of 1940, one of the last motor races in Europe before the intensification of the Second World War, was notable for the arrival of a new team, Auto Avio Construzioni, led by one Enzo Ferrari.

- In 1930, Tazio Nuvolari was tailing Achille Varzi at dawn, but turned off his headlights so that Varzi could not see his Alfa Romeo. On the straight run-in to Brescia, Nuvolari swept past to victory - and flicked his headlights on as he went by.

- Hans Herrmann had a lucky escape in the 1954 race when the barrier started to come down at a level crossing as he arrived at full pelt. He simply smacked the helmet of Herbert Linge, his co-driver, to warn him to duck and then hurtled underneath the looming wooden barrier.

- Sir Stirling Moss was the fastest man over the Mille Miglia at an astonishing average speed of 97.96mph with Denis Jenkinson, his co-driver, reading directions from a 15-foot long roll of paper and giving hand signals. Moss warned Jenkinson to make sure his directions were correct; Jenkinson replied that he had an investment in getting the instructions correct because, if they crashed, he would die, too.

- The great Juan Manuel Fangio refused to run the Mille Miglia with a co-driver because he believed it was too dangerous.

- Ultimately, Fangio was proved right. The race was ended in 1957 when the Marquis de Portago crashed, killing himself, his co-driver and a dozen spectators and the event now runs as an historic rally.