A down-at-heel and dented BMW 328 with an MG TC gearbox and Bristol bits in the engine was put up for sale 1967. It had a home-made hardtop and been club raced, as Denis Jenkinson put it, “by well-meaning impecunious enthusiasts, unable or incapable of maintaining a car the way a factory does.” It had deteriorated so badly it was about to disappear from motor racing history.

It did not. It kept cropping up. I watched in in 1953 when it was one of the biggest winners in British amateur racing. I saw it next as the bangers-and-cash candidate of 1967, then in 1993 I drove it 1000 miles as a £2million masterpiece. This was the BMW 328 that took part in what was perhaps wrongly called Hitler’s Mille Miglia in 1940.

It wasn’t his. It was Mussolini’s. The Italians called it the First Gran Premio Brescia delle Millia Miglia, maybe changing the name because they thought the Germans might win it. Which, of course, they did.

I featured the exquisite 2-seater in my Sunday Times column. No wonder Sir William (as he became) Lyons cribbed the style for the XK120. I photographed it in front of one of my fondly remembered hotels, Turnberry, Ayrshire, where I saw it win a race on the old airfield runway, driven by Gillie Tyrer. I was young and impressionable. Never guessed that here, with it I would write a footnote to motor racing history.

More on the BMW 328 in Classic Sports Cars 1.