Phil Hill at speed in his 250 MM Ferrari at the First Annual Santa Barbara Road Races on Sunday, September 6, 1953. The venue's landmark airport hanger and 4,000-ft Santa Ynez Mountains are seen in the background. Santa Barbara's races, ever-popular social events and always cornering challenges, were run from 1953 to 1969. Photo courtesy Tony Andrieassen Collection.

The drive from my place to Santa Barbara Municipal Airport is about 6 miles. You take Hollister Avenue past the malls, condos, restaurants and tire stores, everything that's gone up where farms and lemon groves used to be. Years pass; change happens. I was thinking about the sports car road races and what it was like fifty years ago when they got started here on the old airport runways and service roads where the landmark curved-roof hanger still stands. We came to Santa Barbara then, long before I lived here, in our MGs and Healeys and Jags, and less exotics. My ride, a wedding gift from my Ferrari-owning father, John Edgar, was a spanking yellow Mercury ($2,451) with Porter mufflers. Phil Hill's ride ($12,500) was red, and Italian.

Earlier that year, in April of 1953, Phil had his brand new 2.9-liter Ferrari 250 MM flown from New York to California in time for the races at Pebble Beach, five months before Labor Day weekend's inaugural event at Santa Barbara. Today, at 75, Hill reminisced with me about getting that Vignale Mille Miglia spyder from his home in Santa Monica up to Pebble. "Bill Spear drove his 4.1 Mexico, and I drove my 2.9. My sister was following in a Ford six station wagon." Quite a highway sight, that off-to-the races caravan.

Diagram of the 250 Mille Miglia Ferrari from a 1953 factory brochure. Compared to the 166 MM, this frame design and gearbox placement appear better suited for racing. The 250 MM has a 2953cc V-12 developing 240 hp @ 7200 rpm. Courtesy Edgar Motorsport Archive.

Phil had won the very first Pebble in 1950 in a Jaguar, and was back again now in '53 with the 250 MM, better than his previous 212 Barchetta, but less than perfect. "One thing that was a pain in the ass about the thing, and really hurt you," he told me about the 2.9, "was those four-choke carburetors. The velocity was so low through any individual choke that when you went around corners it just ran out of fuel. Momo made those little bottles that went onto the side of the float bowls, but I never drove any of those cars, either the big ones or the little ones, that those bottles did any good at all. I remember at Pebble Beach that second turn was very slow, more than 90 degrees, and that the car just stopped there and it took forever for it to pick up again."

Looking down the dozen thirsty carburetor mouths of Hill’s 250 MM Ferrari V-12. These three Weber 4-chokes were fed by two forward-mounted mechanical fuel pumps (top of photo). This picture is from the June 5, 1953, issue of Motor World magazine, of which Phil Hill was technical advisor along with Roger Barlow and Bill Stroppe. Courtesy Edgar Motorsport Archive.

Despite Hill's 2.9 carburetion pickle, the 1953 SCCA National 100-mile Del Monte Trophy was resoundingly his, ending the reign of Bill Pollack in Tom Carsten's Cad-Allard and illustrating three liters could be better than six. "Flying Phil" lapped 3rd place Pollack at the checkered, after caravan-partner Spear got past Pollack when the Allard's brakes went away. Young Phil Hill was one happy new Ferrari owner.

Then, a month later at Golden Gate Park, his presumably reliable 2.9 let him down. Phil recalls, "I was miles in the lead, and the back axel just split open. The second and third place cars spun in my oil, and Masten Gregory in a C-Type cruised home for his first win." At Moffett Field in August, it was the rear axel again. "I only went about a yard," Phil told me of his start. "I think the darn case was distorting, and then suddenly it would climb up a tooth, and then in an instant it would just split the thing open."

Later on in the year, Hill would drive his 250 MM in the SCCA National at Reno, finishing second overall behind the 300-horsepower 340 MM of Sterling Edwards. Said Phil of Edwards in the heftier 4.1, "He just out-dragged me to the finish line."

Following the axle failures at Golden Gate and Moffett, Phil's next race in his 2.9 was to be the California Sports Car Club's much anticipated Santa Barbara Opener set for the first weekend in September. But first let's look at the car and what it was.

Hill’s Pebble Beach winning 2.9, among the first production model 250 Mille Miglias to leave the factory at Maranello, was progeny of an experimental 2.9 Giovanni Bracco drove to heroic victory in the 1952 Mille Miglia, and so the 'MM' tag. Hill's 94.5-inch wheelbase 250 (Ferrari Serial Number 0260), body by Alfredo Vignale, weighed dry only 1950 pounds. Its 2953cc SOHC V-12 made 240 bhp at 7200 rpm, 70 horses up from his old 212. Independent front suspension design was of the unequal length A-arms and transverse leaf spring type, including Houdaille shock absorbers as in earlier Ferrari setups. Rear suspension was live axle, with semi-elliptic springs and parallel trailing arms each side. The 250's steel-lined 13-inch aluminum brake drums were improved by centrifugal air exhaust ducts for cooler, beefed-up braking, and incorporated twin cylinders with cast aluminum shoes fixed in the center, the liners energized at both ends utilizing a 'floating anchor' arrangement. At Pebble's post-race inspection, Hill's brake drums were as smooth as at the start.

Gear shifting was through a center floor lever. Instead of Ferrari's usual five speeds forward, the 250 MM had but four, synchromesh. Phil loved the change, calling the new transmission "superior and reliable." The back of the gear box employed a heavy shock joint for absorbing road pounding. Seven alternately spaced steel and aluminum plates made up the 2.9's multiple-disc clutch. Rear axle ratios ranged from 4.66:1 through 4.44:1, 4.00:1, to 3.63:1, providing top gear speeds from 123 mph all the way up to 160 mph.

Finally, there were those worrisome 4-choke downdraft model 36 IF4/C Webers, three of them, replacing the trio of less heady but more predictable twin-chokes common to other Ferrari models of the day.

Course map from the First Annual Santa Barbara Road Races program. The 2.2-mile airport circuit laid out on the concrete and black top service roads and runways was table-flat, making cornering difficult. 4-choke carburetion in Phil Hill’s 250 MM suffered by resulting G-forces and extreme lean angles in the turns. Courtesy Edgar Motorsport Archive.

For upcoming Santa Barbara, barring further axle failure, Phil Hill's big concern was fuel distribution, in that airport course's fast, table-flat corners where G-force would trouble the 4-chokes. "The car would go like a bullet down the straight," said Phil, recalling the 2.9's performance, "and all through the turn it would just be running on six cylinders. One side would get completely drowned out." He paused, reflecting on things a half century ago, then added, "It probably needed a bunch of little dams inside the float chamber."

The past just won't fade away, thank heaven.

This story continues in Part Two, as Phil Hill drives his 250 MM into Labor Day weekend 1953 Santa Barbara, to go against Bill Stroppe's Kurtis 500S at the 9-turn, 2.2-mile airport venue.

William Edgar, co-author with Michael T. Lynch and Ron Parravano of their book, American Sports Car Racing in the 1950s, makes available for media his Edgar Motorsport Archive of 1950s sports car racing images at www.edgar-motorsport.com