Malcolm has been a fan of microcars since reading an article in Classic Cars magazine about Berkeley sports cars at the age of 14. At 20 he bought a Berkeley T60 in Dundee, put it back on the road and drove it widely. He became Editor of the Berkeley Enthusiasts Club newsletter, turning it from a Gestetner-duplicated effort of a few sides to a proper A5 club magazine - invaluable experience when he joined Classic Cars magazine in 1989. And while editing the Berkeley Club magazine, he learned of the unique Liège-Brescia-Liège Rally of July 1958, organised by Jacques Ickx of the Royal Motor Union of Liège.
Ickx, father of F1 racer Jacky, was one of the organisers of legendary rallies like Liège-Rome-Liège and Liège-Sofia-Liège, which were well known as the toughest events of the 1950s. Ickx was fascinated by the plethora of small cars that hit the market in response to the Suez crisis of 1956. The crisis passed more swiftly than expected, but the tiny cars remained, so he decided to run a rally to establish which of them could be regarded as serious, durable transport and which could not. Liège-Brescia-Liège only happened once in period, and was unique in its time, as all other rallies back then were for all makes and sizes of cars. Its route was a superb distillation of the best of the Liège-Rome-Liège routes, heading east into Yugoslavia to make it even more challenging - but still just the right size for us to recreate the event today as a 10-11 day competitive tour, with c200 miles each day and nice hotels each night - a huge contrast to the 1958 non-stop rally but still following its wonderful original route.
We have run Liège-Brescia-Liège for microcars in 2008 and 2018, and in between for many and varied groups, such as cars up to 1000cc, cars up to 1500cc, Jaguar XKs and E-types, TVRs, MGs, Triumph TRs and more. We're open to suggestions for future events - if your Club would like to drive Liège-Brescia-Liège with us, get in touch!