Driving a BMW 3.0 CS on the 1000 Miglia Experience UAE: Dubai meets Brescia

By Martin Buckley

| 28 Mar 2025

Classic & Sports Car – Driving a BMW 3.0 CS on the 1000 Miglia Experience UAE: Dubai meets Brescia

The clue is in the title: The 1000 Miglia Experience UAE.

In other words, this event is not a hardcore rally for a carefully selected group of historically faithful pre-1958 cars, but a four-day jaunt in the desert sunshine for a mixed bag of vintage, classic and contemporary vehicles, ranging in period from 1928 (a Chrysler 75 roadster) to the very latest luxury and supercar machinery in the Contemporary Icons – or conspicuous consumption – class.

The 2024 proceedings were dominated by German marques (where else would you find six Mercedes-Benz 300SLs competing?) and German drivers, but with a smattering of British, European, American and Middle Eastern entrants to give an appealing international flavour.

The United Arab Emirates has been hosting a Middle Eastern take on the Italian 1000 Miglia since 2022, and the event is developing a character all of its own

Out of 90 cars, 34 were Mercedes-Benzes, including a certain Jochen and Bettina Mass in a G-Class.

The Porsche entry totalled 15, weighted heavily towards the 911 (most of them very quick) – or 16 if you included the black 928 press car fielded by event organiser Octanium.

Pre-war highlights were Martin Stretton’s booming Lagonda LG45, a German-owned Lagonda V12 Le Mans car (although it looked too shiny to be pukka) and a throaty, sinister, UK-based Ford V8 Business Coupe in black that came well up in the final standings.

The third-placed Jaguar XK140 of Gault/Conti heads off

More unlikely competitor vehicles included a surprisingly fast, British-entered Rover P5B saloon (with period air conditioning) and a ‘clap-door’ Lincoln Continental from a leading Indian collection, formerly the property of Mother Teresa (via the Pope)!

Apart from losing a wheel cover or two along the way, this massive car appeared to take everything in its stride.

Throw in some good roads (plus some bad ones), four luxury hotels and guaranteed desert heat in an atmosphere of convivial hedonism, and you can readily appreciate that there are worse places to be in early December.

The Mercedes-Benz 300SL of McGuire/Phipps braves the heat

Certainly, it was a gravy train aboard which I was quite happy to climb, if only for the potential people-watching value.

The first stop was the Blade Runner-like cityscape of Dubai, where the entrants were flagged off between the golf club’s fairways from 9am.

Being assigned car 74 meant a fairly leisurely start for me and co-driver Nicolò Minerbi, our mount a 1973 BMW 3.0 CS automatic.

I felt at home immediately both with Nicolò (he’s an Italian old-car writer who inherited an Aurelia B12 from his father, so we had plenty of Lancia stuff to chat about) and in the blue BMW, having been intimate with these coupés since childhood.

Classic & Sports Car’s Martin Buckley fell for the 1973 BMW 3.0 CS automatic

The smell of the velour took me back to the day in 1978 when my dad bought a seven-year-old BMW 2800 CS.

Our E9 for the 1000 Miglia Experience UAE, from 1-5 December 2024, had been imported recently from Japan and then extensively refurbished for a local collection, and it earned further brownie points when we found that its air-con didn’t just work, but worked well.

I was almost glad I wasn’t being roasted alive in a Gullwing, although I suspect 300SL owners like nothing better than driving about with their famous doors aloft as a badge of honour.

With its turbine-like straight-six, superb vision and handsome, square-jawed profile, the classic BMW was hard to fault (I even grew to like the auto ’box), and it made me realise how few good examples of them I have ever driven.

The BMW 3.0 CS turned out to be the perfect classic car for enjoying the 1000 Miglia Experience UAE 2024 without taking things too seriously

Nicolò was quite happy to navigate and let me drive most of the time so he could take photos; the arrangement suited us both very well.

I say ‘navigate’, but most of the time we just followed people who looked as if they knew where they were going – beginning with a couple in a smoky, red Mercedes 280SL Pagoda – rather than sticking to the roadbook (which by all accounts was not hugely accurate anyway), and we studiously tried to avoid getting involved with the timed regularity side of proceedings.

We only got truly lost the once, having missed an exit on one of the more dreary motorway stretches.

Luckily, a friendly copper appeared from nowhere and soon put us back on track.

The sinuous, well-surfaced road up to the UAE’s highest point presented an extended, hillclimb-like driving challenge

Dubai is relatively congested, mostly with throwaway Japanese cars (many unfamiliar to UK eyes), in a society where vehicles tend to be routinely replaced rather than repaired.

The standard of driving isn’t poor, and even out of town the roads are mostly well-surfaced, although the odd cattle grid can give you a surprise.

The locals are amiable – and hugely enthusiastic about the older cars – and the police are apparently on board with the idea of brisk driving, although you are on your own if you get caught speeding.

In certain spots the rules are vigorously enforced by prominent levels of electronic surveillance: you can even earn yourself a ticket for eating while driving. On the plus side, the speed limit on some of the motorways can be as high as 90mph.

The Porsche 911 Carrera MFi of Nouh/Al Arfaj came second

Our classic BMW was far from slow – the Porsche 928 struggled to keep up – but I was always being overtaken by hot Jaguar XKs, seemingly the car of choice among those who were doing the event by the book, rather than simply following their noses like we chose to do.

The BMW 3.0 CS took the many speed humps in its stride, but some of the low-slung exotics were reduced to walking pace: a yellow Ferrari 348 was seen comically negotiating them at an angle to avoid damaging its underside.

I doubt the all-female German team in a low-slung Austin-Healey 3000 enjoyed them much, either.

Bailyes’ Bentley MkVI soaks up the sun on the 1000 Miglia Experience UAE

Following the high-rise glamour (and conspicuous plastic surgery) of Dubai, life is still fairly traditional out in the sticks.

Rustic characters sell candyfloss and nuts at the roadside in scorching midday heat, while small wild goats trim the grass on roundabouts and free-range camels traverse the deserts.

Leg one on Sunday was from Dubai to our hotel at Ras Al-Khaimah, via lunch at the JA Hatta Fort Hotel (you won’t starve on this event) and some fast, interesting roads in a landscape that’s eerily forbidding rather than beautiful.

The 1000 Miglia Experience UAE’s varied entry list had everything from BMWs and Porsches to Mercedes-Benzes and Lagondas

Monday was UAE National Day, a sort of bank holiday to celebrate the formation of the Emirates in the early 1970s.

Thus traffic was fairly light, but we did scratch our heads at the bleak, rubbish-strewn roadside spots in which some of the local day-trippers chose to park and enjoy their free time.

The run up to Jebel Jais was in effect a hillclimb to the highest point in the UAE, with fantastic views across the mountains, on a smoothly surfaced switchback road that seemed to go on for ever.

At the top, suddenly, it was lunchtime again in a restaurant on the side of the mountain, complete with what was said to be the world’s longest zip line.

The BMW 3.0 CS automatic proved to be supple-riding, usefully rapid and blissfully cool

I passed on the high-wire and spent two nights at the hotel in Fujairah with a run out to the Hatta Hills on day three, by then with Sami Tebi co-driving.

I was glad of his local knowledge: I would have got hopelessly lost on this leg, particularly when circling back to Dubai for lunch at the Autodrome circuit, where I got to drive the BMW around the track – once all the jostling for position by the owners of the more expensive cars had subsided.

We had originally been due to use a 450SEL 6.9 from the Mercedes-Benz press-car pool, but I bonded with the little pillarless BMW (there was another, manual example from Poland competing) and felt almost protective of it.

Martin takes a break from driving to meet the locals

On the third day, while heading towards a stop at the Platinum Heritage desert safari camp for a spot of camel-cuddling, the rough, high-frequency ridged surface of the approach road felt like an abuse of this beautiful car, so much so that I abandoned the habit of a lifetime and slowed down – only to be left in a cloud of dust and stones by a hard-driven Pontiac GTO.

Some of the American cars didn’t do well in the desert heat, surprisingly: I spotted the GTO taking on water several times.

Suddenly, on the fourth day, after the long haul to Abu Dhabi, it was all over and I felt as if I could have gone to bed for a week – not that I could afford to in the lavish, 40-plus-floor Conrad hotel that marked the finish line.

Applying the roundels to ‘our’ refurbished BMW E9 classic car

You get the sense that people in this part of the world have no real idea of how dependable a classic car can be, and that most would consider driving anything more than 10 years old for 1000 miles an eccentricity too far.

Yet the only DNF was the pretty, German-entered Fiat-Osca (see below, where we get to know some of the participants), which started burning a little more oil than its owner was comfortable with.

The idea of a Middle Eastern version of perhaps the most glamorous of European classic motorsport events might not sit well with everybody.

But the 1000 Miglia Experience UAE treads a well-judged line between selling out the legacy of the original Italian event and creating something with a character of its own, while timekeepers imported from Brescia field this and the other ‘Experience’ events for those who want to make a proper job of it.

Images: Charles Verghese

Thanks to: 1000 Miglia

Philip & Yvonne Haslam: 1954 Jaguar XK120 dhc

This Jaguar XK120 has visited 56 countries in 19 years

“We’ve come from sunny Derbyshire, so it was a long trip down,” said Philip. “We flew, but the car started out on a ship in mid-October, because it had to go around the Cape.

“We clocked up its 200,000th mile this summer, having owned it for 19 years and visited 56 countries in it.

“Two years ago we took it to China and drove the entire length of the Himalayas on the Tibetan side. We got to within 11km of Everest Base Camp, came over the Himalayas and finished in Kathmandu.

“It’s very dependable: the engine is stunning, and I’ve fitted a modern five-speed gearbox, disc brakes and an alloy radiator. We have driven all over the world and it has never overheated – this car has become a very good friend.

“We’re staying on after the event and driving to Qatar, Saudi and Bahrain, then we’ll eventually ship it back.

“We had a big accident in the Jaguar last year in Finland when we hit a reindeer extremely hard. But thankfully it was only superficial damage to the bonnet and the front wing, so we were able to do another 6000 miles on that trip.”

Fritz & Gabi Kozka: 1961 Fiat-Osca 1500S

Fritz & Gabi Kozka’s Fiat-Osca 1500S has just been restored

“We have just restored this car to as-new condition,” said 1000 Miglia Experience UAE participant Fritz. “It’s like a mini Maserati, but few people understand what ‘Osca’ means.

“There was a lot of work to do on the car, but finally we are here, we are happy and it’s good to be in the sunshine.

“I’ve done the Italian 1000 Miglia 11 times and been to Goodwood on many occasions, but this is my first trip to Dubai.

“It’s Gabi’s car, but she allows me to drive it; she is co-pilot.

“Last year we did a long-distance rally in a specially prepared Porsche 924, driving from Alaska to Mexico.”

Thomas Fischer & André Emil Ehrbar: 1928 Bentley 4½ Litre

This 1928 Bentley 4½ Litre was a reliable companion for the 1000 Miglia Experience UAE 2024 – despite the heat

“I use this car a lot – around 10,000km a year throughout Europe, although in 2025 we’re doing an event in Colorado,” said Thomas.

“We’re enjoying the people and the weather. It’s very reliable: you just have to look after the oil and put in fuel – amazing for a car that’s nearly 100 years old.

“It’s quite hard to drive and change gear, and the brake is on the right not in the middle, but it easily does 100mph.”

Karl-Helmut Larkamp: 1959 BMW 502 Cabriolet

This BMW 502 Cabriolet is powered by a 3.2-litre V8

“I’m the owner of the Thiesen car dealership in Berlin, and this is the third time I’ve done this event: fantastic people, and a fantastic country. I did it for two years with my Mercedes-Benz 190SL, which I’ve owned for 37 years.

“This is the only BMW 502 Cabriolet with the 3.2-litre V8 engine; all the others are 2.6s. It has 160bhp, so it goes quite well.

“We flew the car over this time, but I shipped the 190SL – in fact, we were so surprised by how good the event was in 2022 that we left the Mercedes here to use it for the 2023 run. My wife Beate enjoys it, too, which always helps!”

Enjoy more of the world’s best classic car content every month when you subscribe to C&SC – get our latest deals here

Mercedes-Benz 280SL Pagoda: an adventure of a lifetime

Meet the classic cars of Madeira