As is my wont, I often Google subjects when they are in the news to see what I can find out about them. Historical tidbits and what have you, something that I might be able to drop into a conversation to either impress or bore someone (there are times when one or the other can be desirable). My Google search for the Monte revealed this nice set of stamps, commemorating the 27th running of the Rallye in 1958. The stamps had been sold but they are still rather nice to look at and I decided to investigate the 1958 running of the Monte Carlo Rallye. As it happens, my research revealed some interesting facts and stories.
The race had not been run the previous year due to the Suez Canal crisis in Egypt. Fuel shortages meant that fuel coupons could not be issued to the competitors. This meant the 1958 running was eagerly anticipated in the Rallye world, and a large field entered. This year also featured an important change in the running of the event. Prior to 1957 a feature of the last day of the rally was a range of automotive tests (a gymkhana) run on the waterfront in Monaco. This year that feature was dropped so that speed and timing alone would decide the victor.
The winners were Guy Monraisse and Jacques Feret in their Renault Alpine, from A. Gacon and L. Borsa in their Alfa Romeo Giulietta. Monraisse and Feret were privateers with no works backing, so their win was a remarkable achievement, even more so when you consider there was an exceptional snowfall on the first night of the rallye which meant that many drivers crashed out or abandoned.
How bad was this snow? Only one car made it from Paris through to Monte Carlo on the concentration run. English Rally driving great Pat Moss' brush with the 1958 Monte was described in her biography "Harnessing Horsepower." This years Rallye was the first in which studded tyres were allowed to be used. Clearly this didn't help many of the entrants.
The two victors, being residents of the area of the rally, used their local knowledge of the roads to good effect in their victory. In one final twist the pairing didn't run as a conventional driver/navigator pairing but shared the duties equally. To prove the win wasn't a fluke, later in the year they also went on to win the Tour de Corse (Corsica Rally) in the same car which was later presented to Prince Ranier and now resides in the Monte Carlo "Top Cars" museum.
There you go, a little Monte Carlo Rally history lesson just from a set of stamps.
