Sandro Munari was was first sporting hero.
It was a November day in 1976, and I was on New Brighton seafront. Back at my grandmother's house a roast dinner was going cold as the Lombard RAC rally was running late. Just as the cars were due to arrive a photographer stood right in front on six-year-old me. My Dad moved him on, and soon after Penti Airikala's private Escort RS1800 flashed past, followed a minute later by Roger Clark's iconic Cossack liveried version. Then, from out of sight, came the sound of a 24 valve Ferrari Dino engine in full flight and into view came the white and green wedge of the Lancia Stratos. This was my first sight of Il Drago in action in the car he is intimately associated with the Stratos. But that wasn't where it all began.
He actually started out as a co-driver but was apparently so bad at reading the maps the driver handed him the steering wheel. In 1965 he entered his first rally as a driver, the 1965 1000. He was driving a Lancia Flavia and in his only attempt at the event managed 43rd. He did the next year's Monte in a Flavia before moving into the car that was to propel him to fame, the Lancia Fulvia. The Fulvia was a two-seater coupe that cost as much as an E Type Jaguar. It eventually had a 1.6 litre engine but offered the type of front wheel drive handling the rest of us didn't get to experience until the era of the hot hatch. He didn't manage to get one to the finish of a rally in 1966, but the next year he won four events and the Italian championship.
Munari started the 1968 Monte Carlo rally as one of the world's best drivers with high hopes for the season, but tragedy struck before the first special stage. The rally still had a dispersed start, and Munari had opted to begin in Athens. On a road section through Yugoslavia (as it then was) Munari came round a corner and found an oncoming car overtaking two lorries. His co-driver, 37-year-old Luciano Lombardini, died at the scene and it was initially reported that Munari was also dead. He was in fact alive, but seriously injured. Lombardini had not wanted to do the rally but agreed only because Munari was his friend and they had won the previous year's Tour de Corse together.
Munari did not rally again that year, but in 1969 he was back and once more Italian champion. In 1972 he won the world's most prestigious rally, the Monte Carlo, before swapping the Fulvia for a fearsome, Formula One engines Ferrari 312PB for the Targa Florio. This was a road race, a sort of preview of Group B with 400bhp plus sports cars racing along ordinary Sicilian streets. He won.
The next year he tackled the European Rally Championship. The WRC launched the same year but didn't include a Drivers title at this point, so the ERC was the world's top accolade for a driver. However, there was more for Munari.
The Lancia Fulvia was a great car, but in the ear of the Renault Alpine 1800 and Ford Escort RS1600 it was seriously outgunned. Fortunately, Lancia had been working on something rather special. The Stratos was the world's first purpose built Group 4 rally car and Munari was the driver it was being built for. The vehicle was almost literally built around him to the extent that anyone taller had problems even fitting into it. It had been seen in pre-homologation form on the 1973 Targa Florio, where the standard struts had failed. Development work continued in 1974, but it wasn't ready for the start of the WRC season. Fortunately for Lancia, the oil shock wiped out the first two rounds. Munari missed Portugal and Finland and managed to get a third in Kenya with the Fulvia. Then the Stratos was finally ready.
It was October 1974, and bizarrely still only the fourth round of the series. It was quite a debut for the red and white wedge. The car was fastest on the first four stages and Munari took the lead on the second stage and held it to the end. He did it again on the Rideau Lakes - Canada's first WRC round. The Press on Regardless rally in the USA was skipped by most of the teams, hence it ended up being won by a Renault 17, but Lancia still went into the Lombard RAC Rally needing only a podium to win the championship. Munari duly obliged, following home an Escort and a Saab. The car that hadn't been homologated until Autumn had won the championship for Lancia.
1974 had been an odd season though. 1975 though promised to be better. Ford, Fiat and Renault Alpine all sent their best cars and drivers to Monte Carlo to try to beat Munari and the Stratos. A traditionally snowy Monte, Ford and Fiat were soon left behind and it was a duel between 1973 champions Renault Alpine and reigning champions Lancia. It was a fascinating battle. When the stages were completely white the little French cars could just about keep up with Munari, but as soon as some tarmac appeared the Lancia left them behind. Munari won his second Monte.
It was an emphatic victory. A little too emphatic perhaps. Renault Alpine saw the writing on the wall and abandoned rallying whilst Ford effectively agreed to stick to the forest until they could build a new car. Fiat might have been up a fight, but the company had just bought Lancia and the board decided to divide up the events so the two teams didn't fight each other. The result was a disappointing year for Munari. After second on the Safari, he only finished two Italian rallies, one of which he won.
1976 was better though. He won his second Monte on the trot, then Portugal then the Tour de Course. With a third in Morocco and a controversial second to teammate Bjorn Waldegard in Italy it was looking like a great season. Munari brought the Stratos to Britain looking like the Italians could finally win an RAC. However, whilst little me didn't notice, other onlookers felt Munari was not really committed.
The reason why became apparent later. Since Fiat bought their rival politics had always threatened the Lancia team. They had been told to not go to some rallies to give the Fiat 124 Abarth a chance, but now the little Fiat had been replaced by the 131 Abarth, a much more capable car, and Turin had decided that it was to be Fiat that would battle Ford for the championship.
1977 started well enough. The Alitalia Stratos completed a hat trick of Monte Carlo victories, writing Munari into the history books. But for Munari and Lancia it would be a season of playing second fiddle to Fiat. He won national rallies in Italy and South Africa, but the few world events they were allowed to enter were disappointments. The wettest Safari on record turned his Stratos into a submarine, although Munari managed finish third behind a Ford and a Datsun. Mechanical failure on the San Remo and an accident in Corica put the car out, whilst an early issue on the RAC left the Stratos well down the field and continuing only to please the fans, which sadly didn't include me as I was in bed with a bad cold.
Munari started the 1978 to make it four wins on the trot on the Monte Carlo, but the Stratos, looking magnificent in its new red and black Pirelli colours, broke down early on. Munari then transferred to the unfamiliar Fia the first time he'd entered a conventional car in fourteen years. He had the pace, but unfortunately not the luck. In Portugal the car started falling apart early on. In Greece he took the lead before a broken half shaft gave him road penalties and then broken suspension put him out. In San Remo Munari again took the head, ahead of Fiat's main driver Markku Alen, who was now in a Stratos, until he disappeared off one of the country's many unguarded drops for no particular reason. On the Tour de Corse he led for the first two stages before he punctured and damaged the suspension. He eventually came home third, his best result of the year.
For the final event of the year, the Lombard RAC Rally, Munari was back in a Stratos again. I was there to see my hero again, but it was not a happy rally for him. Whilst Alen took the fight to the Fords, Munari was only just in the top ten before retiring at less than half distance. It was the last official outing for the mighty Stratos, and it was appropriate Munari should be behind the wheel of one.
With a young Walter Rohrl winning rallies for them now, Fiat dropped Munari as a lead driver, although they called on his experience when they needed it, giving him drives in the 1979 Safari and 1980 Ivory Coast rallies. Neither were good results. He tried again in successive years on the Safari in a Dodge Ramcharger, Porsche 911, Alfetta GTV6 and finally a mighty Group B Toyota Twin Cam Turbo in 1984. Sadly, each one expired, and he ended his career without ever having achieved a result in Africa that he was happy with.
That was his last world rally, but he continued as a living legend for the next three decades, mostly entering Lancia in historic events. Sadly, he never rallied again in the UK and so after his second run through Trentham Gardens in 1978 I never saw him in action.
