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When the flag drops and Dr. George Verrilli sets off to compete in the Fifth Annual Targa Newfoundland Rally next month, his mind just might flash back to the moment he let in the clutch of a Lancia B20 to start a Targa event on another island more than half a century ago.

In 1953, American-born Verrilli, now 78, was a medical student in Italy with a passion for cars and racing, and had hooked up with Gianni Marzotto, scion of a wealthy and equally car-crazy Italian family. It was in their racing stable's Lancia he ran that year's legendary Targa Florio in Sicily, the event that provided inspiration for the current globe-spanning rallies: Targa Tasmania, Targa New Zealand and Targa Newfoundland.

Unlike the modern Targas, which see entrants compete in special closed-road stages over a five-day period, the Targa Florio — Targa was the plate awarded to the winner and Florio was the family name of the event's founder — was a flat-out road race.

It was contested by all the famous factories and drivers of the day and comprised eight laps of a rough 125-kilometre dirt and pavement course that took competitors from sea level up into the mountains and — not unlike our own Targa — through many small communities packed with avid enthusiasts.

Verrilli recalls that driving through the mountain towns with people waving and the exhaust roaring off the stone buildings "was just so . . . exciting. You just hoped you could fit through the crowd."

He remembers coming around one curve in a four-wheel drift "and there was this old lady with a cane — and of course there was just a stone wall on the curve — and my rear wheel knocked the cane out of her hand. Oh, my god. And they just didn't care. They were so enthusiastic."

When he came into the pits on one lap, he says somebody handed him a bottle of wine. "I guess he thought I'd race better if I had a little wine under my belt. It was such fun," he laughs.

Verrilli competed in the Targa Florio again in 1954, but also ran in the other epic open-road race of the time, Italy's Mille Miglia — a 1,000-mile run from Brescia to Rome and back — in 1953, 1955 and 1956. He finished poorly in the first one, seventh in class in the 1955 event at the wheel of his own Austin-Healey 100-4M and crashed it comprehensively in the final event.

"It was hair-raising. Every year, people were killed. Tourists would get angry and get out on the roads. And they didn't even stop the trains," which crossed the route in places, he says. "One year, we hit a chicken and it got caught up in the Healey's exhaust and when it came out it was roasted. It was an awful stink."

The crash, which "didn't total the car, but only because the Italians can rebuild anything," was on the run up into the Apennines near Pescara. "We slid on a donkey turd in the rain and hit one of those trees the Italians plant along the side of the roads."

Verrilli was born and raised (his father was a doctor) in Mamaroneck, N.Y., and wound up in Italy after beginning his medical training in Scotland where it was "cold, damp and stinky, there was no campus life" and no automobile action.

He transferred to Rome, but it "was so much fun" he didn't get anything done and moved again to the University of Padua, located not far from places of motoring magic like Modena, Monza and Imola.

A self-confessed "motorhead from birth," he began competing in hill climbs in Italy in an MG TD before moving up to the 2.0-litre Lancia. And while motor racing may have provided a few life-threatening moments during this period, it was off-track he dodged the most serious threats.

He was one of only two survivors of the crash of a DC-6 airline in New York in 1953 and he and his mother (the former Maude Beaton of Springhill, N.S.) decided at the last minute to cancel their return to the United States on what turned out to be the ocean liner Andrea Doria's final fatal voyage.

Back in New York in 1956, the newly minted doctor went to work in obstetrics and gynecology, delivering a total of 14,129 babies and becoming an expert on prepared child birth. His book on the subject sold six million copies. He says he's quit delivering babies, but still operates his practice.

Along the way, he "did a little racing at local tracks." In 1956, with "mad money" received after the plane crash, he purchased the Marquis de Portago's 1956 Nassau speed week Ferrari 250MM. Portago died in the Mille Miglia a year later, taking 12 spectators with him and ending the event. "My first wife made me sell it. It would be worth over a million bucks now."

But he still has 30 cars to keep him amused and just dodged fate yet again by emerging virtually unscathed after totalling his 1999 Ferrari 456 this summer. "I bounced off a tractor trailer, did a 720, and went down a ravine backwards. I'm a lucky guy, boy."

The Verrilli family maintains a Canadian connection with a summer home in Nova Scotia, and he's operated the Gulf Shore Camping Park near Pugwash since 1968. His next-door neighbour is Anne Murray.

"I'm 78 now and my take on this is, you keep making new memories and that's why I'm doing Targa Newfoundland with this wacky mechanic [Mark Van De Carr, who owns the Triumph Spitfire the pair will co-drive]. You know what? It keeps you going."

The Fifth Annual Targa Newfoundland Rally, which will take competitors on a five-day adventure that covers more than 2,200 km (including 40 closed-road special stages) through 70 communities runs Sept. 10-15 and has so far attracted more than 80 entries.