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WACKY RALLIES IN EUROPE
Question: What's old and long and fast and tough and lots of fun?
Answer: The Liege-Rome Rally.
Those who have done this event before only more-or-less knew what they were up for when they passed over the starting ramp in the town square at Spa in Belgium on June 16th. Each edition of this 69 year-old event is different, and this year was to be tougher than some had bargained for, at least that is what the regulars said, "This is much harder than last year's event". The oversubscribed organisers, Motor Union Classic Race, headed by Alain Defalle, started some 120 cars this year.
With a route that went, eponymously from Liege to Rome, via every mountain pass that very experienced routemaster Alan Lopes could find between the two, cars and drivers were put through their paces for nearly seven days of fast rallying. Though a regularity rally, there was more to it than just being on time. First, you had to survive it, and most importantly, you needed a good car and good driving skills to be able to clear many of the stages even though the average speeds sounded low.
Open only to pre-war and pre-1960 model cars, the event turned out to be an Austin Healey benefit with the top four and five of the top ten overall places taken by the marque. XK Jaguars scored second highest in the placings, with only one prewar car up at the pointy end, the 4 1/2 litre BentIey Tourer, magnificently driven by Paul Carter and expertly navigated by VSCC Competition Secretary, Robert Ellis making it home in eighth place against all odds. The other pre-war team that worked hard for an excellent result was the Belgo-Swiss team of Philippe Burckhardt and Joseph Lambert in their beautifully prepared BMW 328. Having made a mistake costing them heavy penalty points on the first day, they had their work cut out for them to come back up to 11th place and second of the pre-war cars by the end of the rally. They definitely had the Bentley on the ran on the last day.
Tight twisty regularity sections favoured the smaller, lighter cars, but a steady succession of steep mountain passes helped the cars with sheer power hold their own in the competition. A good cooling system was also a definite advantage as temperatures of 30 degrees and pounding sun followed the whole rally, leaving many cars boiling and misfiring as they laboured up the hills. One team, that of Roger and Jill Hadlee, resorted to stuffing left-over mountain snow into their radiator when their 1932 Talbot 105 boiled only a few metres short of the top of the Timmersjloch pass between the Austrian and Italian borders.
Eric Carlsson and Gunnar Palm, who twice finished the then Liege-Sofia-Liege in second place (in 1963 and 1964), were undoubtedly the stars of the event in their factory-prepared Saab which sadly encountered mechanical problems. "The last time I did this event", he said, "we drove 3500 miles with only a one hour break for food in Sofia before it was time to drive back again". Still, Carlsson was impressed with some of the pre-war machinery. After a particularly tight stage he was heard to ask Ellis "How does he do that?", referring to Carter's handling of the big Bentley. It was the highlight of Ellis' rally.
The night stops were at Amnéville in France, Oberstdorf in the stunning Bavarian Alps, Cortina d'Ampezzo, Madonna di Campiglio, Firenze and, at last, Rome. At every stop the cars were warmly greeted by enthusiastic locals, who seemed to appreciate the fact that the cars were all quite a bit older than in many historic (and post-historic) rallies. The police also, and especially the Italian Polizia Stradale, who so enthusiastically escorted the convoy through the towns, were also in love with the older cars. There was not a 911 Porsche in sight.
As in many epreuves the stories of daring and heroism were legion: The Collins/Steinberg 4 1/2 litre Bentley that broke its gearbox and had the good fortune to come to a stop in Maranello in front of a Maserati workshop that was able to re-weld and re-install the shaft for them on the spot. The Pilkingtons, who broke a half shaft in their Frazer Nash Sebring and who, after a hairy freewheeling exercise landed also in front of a garage, but sadly this one was closed. Undaunted, they managed to drop the back axle, improvise a pulling tool vandalised from the closed garage’s fire bucket, and replace the half shaft with the spare they happened to be carrying. All this aided by other competitors who stopped to help with the process. This stop resulted in some powerfully sunburned, but smiling faces at dinner that evening. There were also many stories involving ditches and rescue by tractor, but surprisingly a minimal amount of crumpled bodywork. Then there was the MGA and the tree.....
One of the features (or absence of features) of this rally is the electronic timing system. Each route card has a micro chip which downloads its time at each checkpoint onto a central computer. This A) avoids cheating (not that that's ever an issue) and B) makes the results instantly available to everyone. It is one of the few rallies we have been on where protests about individual scores were not heard. The other feature, different from other rallies we have been on, was that the excellent route book gave not only both miles and kilometres for each tulip, but also the ideal elapsed time to each one. They even gave us a stopwatch, which made it, in theory at least, impossible to get it wrong. As if to illustrate this, navigator, Alexia Schrauwen, driven by her husband Stephan in their Healey 3000, was doing her first rally.
Lunches and dinners were all of high quality and the surprise receptions from towns such as Oberstdorf, where locals used the arrival of the cars as a good excuse for a street party, and Sansepulcro where the doors of the museum were opened for the rallyists and a refreshing brunch was served under a cool verandah, only added to an already happy ambiance. A nice touch from organisers were the cold, wet towel handed out on the finishing line each day as temperatures soared. Everyone's baggage was delivered each night by a valiant baggage crew who had their own mechanical problems on the arduous climb up to Madonna di Campiglio, but overcame them to deliver the clean clothes. Some were competing seriously, some, such as the well-attired, cigar smoking team of impeccable R-Type fastback Bentley drivers, were out for a jolly drive in their cars. Both factions were satisfied customers as the organising team were good natured, helpful and treated all the participants with equal importance, whether they were lying fifth or eighty-fifth in the results. We must congratulate Alain Defalle and his team for making it appear that taking care of 300 people across Europe through six countries is easy. And that is the secret, of course they had a myriad of unforeseen problems, but competitors wined and dined, blissfully unaware.
Was it too tough for the older cars? Paul Carter, in one of the oldest pronounced the route "Perfect". The Hadlees, on the other hand, considered it too hard on the really old cars. We suppose the answer is, "It all depends".
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