When Bill Kniegge started running motorcycle tours in Italy in 2015, he hired a local guide named Claudio Angeletti to lead them. Claudio had been leading car and motorcycle groups through Italy since 2009, knew the roads the way only someone who grew up on them can, and ran a motorcycle safety school in Rome. The combination worked immediately.
But Bill kept noticing something on tour: the roads were extraordinary, the experience was extraordinary — but the guests were almost entirely solo riders or riding couples (meaning both on their own bike). Partners who didn’t ride were left behind at home and were not able to enjoy the experience.
The solution seemed obvious. Put together a fleet of convertibles and sporty roadsters, run a parallel tour on the same roads, and let couples experience Italy together even if only one of them rode a motorcycle. The driving would be spirited, the scenery identical, the dinners shared.
What wasn’t obvious was finding the cars. No rental company had enough quality roadsters in one place to run a proper group tour. The idea stalled — until Bill was introduced to a local Miata enthusiast and collector who had exactly the kind of fleet that made it possible. He agreed to let Blue Strada use his cars, and the first Miata roadster tour launched in October 2019 in Tuscany and Umbria.
Claudio was born in Tuscany. It was the natural place to start.
Among the guests on that inaugural run were Wayne Wilson and his wife — who enjoyed the experience enough to come back for more tours, and eventually for Wayne to join the company as IT and E-Marketing Manager. Some people leave a good tour wanting to buy a Miata. Wayne left wanting to help run the company.
Why Tuscany Was Always the Answer
If you want the full enthusiast’s guide to the specific roads the tour covers, read The Best Driving Roads in Tuscany.
Claudio has a straightforward explanation for why Tuscany works as a driving destination in a way that few places on earth can match: the roads were built by people who didn’t own cars. Medieval hill towns were connected by routes that followed the most logical — which is to say the most scenic — lines across the landscape. Centuries later, those same roads are perfectly sized for a Miata, largely empty outside of summer, and surrounded by countryside that makes no apologies for being beautiful.
Add Umbria on the eastern flank — the high mountain passes of the Monti Sibillini, the extraordinary plateau at Castelluccio di Norcia, the medieval completeness of Assisi — and you have a week’s driving that moves through entirely different landscapes every day. Hill towns, vineyard roads, mountain passes, ancient abbeys. No single day feels like the previous one.
The Fleet, and What It Made Possible
The partnership with the local collector proved the concept — Miatas were the right car, the Tuscany route was the right route, and the demand was real. But using another enthusiast’s cars came with natural constraints: limitations on total kilometers, and on how far the cars could travel from their home base. Tuscany and Umbria were within reach. The Alps, Sardinia, Portugal were not.
In 2023, Claudio established Blue Strada’s own fleet of MX-5s. That changed everything. The tours were no longer limited by geography, and Blue Strada could take its Miatas wherever the roads led — which, it turned out, was a very long list.
Six Years of Getting It Right
The Tuscany & Umbria route has been running since October 2019, and it has never run the same way twice. Almost every tour brings an incremental improvement — a better lunch stop discovered, a village added, a stretch of road refined. What looks from the outside like a settled itinerary is, from the inside, a route under constant quiet development.
What has been consistent from the beginning is the quality of the experience beyond the driving itself. Blue Strada’s guests stay at properties that couldn’t be further from a chain hotel: the Abbazia Collemedio Resort in Umbria, a restored medieval abbey that serves as the three-night base at the start of the tour, and Podere La Strega outside Siena, an exceptional agriturismo that has been part of the tour from day one. These aren’t simply places to sleep. Dinners at both properties are part of the reason guests come back.
This is, honestly, as much a food tour as a driving tour. The wines, the handmade pasta, the dinners that stretch well past any reasonable hour — guests who arrive expecting a driving holiday discover they’ve signed up for both.
Siena itself remains the Tuscan anchor. The roads approaching it suit a Miata perfectly; the city’s historic center is left to be explored on foot, as any sensible person would want it to be. One notable exception to that approach: the time the Miatas were driven onto the Piazza del Campo itself — Siena’s magnificent medieval square, home of the Palio — on a spontaneous and not-to-be-repeated occasion. A memorable moment that has no business being in any official itinerary, and yet.
The go-kart circuit has become a fixture of both the Tuscany and Sardinia tours, because it brings out something in the group that the road driving, politely conducted, doesn’t fully reveal. Guests get competitive. Claudio, who considers himself above such things, also gets competitive. Times are recorded. The disputes continue over dinner.
Two Groups — Two Goals
When numbers allow, the tour splits into two groups. The sport group (also known as the fast group) is committed to driving at a brisk pace, totally focused on the road. They see more of the bumper in front of them than the views along the way. The touring group takes it slower — stopping at viewpoints, wandering through villages, enjoying the passing landscape as much as the speed. Claudio calls the touring group the “daisy pickers,” with the affection of someone who has, on occasion, found them waiting with better photographs and fresher pastries than anyone in the sport group.
There is no wrong choice. Both groups eat at the same table at the end of the day, and you can switch groups daily based on your mood or who has the wheel.
The October 2026 Date
The spring 2026 dates were fully booked. The September date is nearly gone. The October 11–19 tour still has availability — and this date carries a specific significance: 2026 is the last year the Tuscany & Umbria tour departs from Rome. From 2027, the base moves to Milan, the tour gains an extra day, and the route approaches Tuscany from a different direction entirely.
Both are excellent. They’re different tours.
If you want the original Rome-departure version — the route that launched Blue Strada’s Miata program, ending back where it started — this October is the window.
Book Your Tuscany & Umbria Tour
Two dates, two departure cities — both touring the same extraordinary roads.
October 2026 — from Rome → 2027 — from Milan →Where Tuscany Leads
Many guests who start in Tuscany come back for a second or third tour. Italy is large enough that you can return without repetition — and our other Italian Miata tours cover entirely different terrain: