Liège-Brescia-Liège 1958

This unique rally saw tiny cars - all under 500cc - battling non-stop from Liège, via an evening start at Spa, down through the Ardennes and into Germany, then onto the autobahns to test their high speed durability before battling up into the Alps and Dolomites. The cars DID NOT STOP as they tackled pass after pass, heading east into Yugoslavia and over the exceptionally tough Vrsic pass, dropping down to Ljubljana - where there was yet another time control and on, at a relentless pace, back into Italy and all the way up into the Dolomites again, along the legendary Route des Cols and up the Passo di Stelvio, then over and down the Passo di Gavia and into industrial north Italy, finally arriving at the Piazza Loggia in Brescia on Saturday morning, having left Liège the previous Thursday evening.

Cars went into parc ferme - they could not be worked on - and crews could try to get a few hours sleep through the day before jumping back into the cars to drive non-stop back to Liège, the few survivors rolling triumphantly into Spa on Sunday evening. It was an incredible feat of endurance that tested cars and crews to the absolute limit. The English Berkeley team expected to win, but with no fans to cool their air-cooled engines on the long, slow, hairpinned gravel climbs, they seized repeatedly and lost too much time. Even the great Pat Moss and Ann Wisdom couldn't nurse their 328cc Berkeley round the course, though they did make it to the finish dinner at Liège! In the end it was the Fiat 500s, launched in 1957 and led by the brand new factory-entered Fiat 500 Sport that took the laurels. Second went to the Luxembourg-entered 500 Abarth - but the team prize was collected by the extraordinary pushmi-pullyu Zundapp Januses, with just 250cc to push their four-seater shells along - an amazing achievement. Few photos survive, these are the best we have found - if you know of more, please share them with us!