The History of the World Rally Championship:1973

For the World Rally Championship 1973 was the beginning, but for its winners it was also an end.

For the blue Renault Alpine A110 cars which swept the board, with their great French drivers: Jean Luc Therier, Jean Pierre Nicholas, Bernard Darniche and Jean-Claude Andruet, this was their swan song. Never again would the team attempt a full world world rally program and whilst for each driver there would be more victories, they would from now on be bit part players.

The WCR itself was almost a championship in name only. Renault Alpine were the only team to take the thing seriously, the others just sending cars to events they thought they could win. This says a lot about the relative status of the rallies and the championship.

This was a championship for manufacturers, not drivers, and winning the Monte Carlo, Safari or RAC rallies could make a reputation. The championship was secondary. This meant that whilst Renault Alpine appeared to romp to victory, they actually faced pretty tough, if inconsistent, opposition on each rally.

In 1973 it was very much 'horses for courses' as far as rally cars went and the A110 was far and away the best all-rounder of its day. Pretty much unchallenged on tarmac, it could live with the Escorts and Saabs on the loose and survive a rugged African rally as well as a Datsun or a big Peugeot.

During the year factory cars were only beaten by Saab in the snow of Sweden (or more precisely they were beaten by Swedes driving Saabs - no foreigner had yet won their rally), by a BMW 2002 on the Austrian Alpine, by disqualification of the sole works car in Poland (the exact location of Eastern European Passage Controls appeared to be a state secret) and by a trio of Ford Escort RS1600s (and a Volvo) on the RAC. On the snow of the Monte Carlo, the gravel of Portugal, the dust of Morocco and Greece, and on the tarmac of Sanremo and Corsica they were untouchable.


Sadly though the little cars, which had been around for a decade by this point, had run out of development. No more could performance could be rung out of them and from then on the team only made selective appearances on the WCR. The Blue Riders rode off into the sunset and whilst French cars and French drivers would lift the title again in the future, it would 31 years before a French car driven by a French driver would win. That sort of thing means a lot in France.

On the trivia side the 1973 WCR featured the only rally in which a two stroke Warburg came second. This was Polish rally - its only appearance in the championship. 52 cars started and only three finished so the Wartburg actually came second to last. Last place, or should we say third, was a Polski Fiat 125p.

The winner was a works Fiat Abarth 124 and the winning margin was 2 hours and 47 minutes. A quick calculation would suggest that the Fiat was pulling away from the Wartburg at a rate of slightly over 20 seconds a mile so this probably wasn't the closest fought rally ever.

However this damp squip of a rally shouldn't take away the triumph of Renault-Alpine and their Blue Riders. The French would be back, make no mistake, but next year it was to be the turn of the Italians. But which ones?

1973 World Championship for Manufacturers Results