For the 1963 Monte Carlo Rally the Allard Team, consisting of three cars, chose to enter Allardettes. Sydney and Tom Fisk (car 185), and Alan Allard and Bob Mackie (car 150), entered in 997cc Shorrock supercharged Anglias homolgated as Allardettes, whilst Doug Ray and Fred Herwin (car 1) drove a 1340cc Allardette. Both Sydney and Alan chose to start from Glasgow and Doug chose Lisbon. The Allardettes were the first supercharged cars to have competed in the Monte since 1935, when a Shorrock supercharged car won the event.

The 1963 rally, run in January as usual (the middle of the European winter), had eight start points: Lisbon, Paris, Frankfurt, Glasgow, Monte Carlo, Stockholm, Warsaw, and Athens. The “Autocar” race preview of 18 January 1963 sums-up the choice of route thus, “For the (first) two days the separate columns of cars will be converging along their separate routes towards the focal point at Chambery. It may be that one way will prove extremely easy and another impassable. That happened in 1958, when the entire Paris contingent, except for a single car, failed to get through. This is why the choice of starting points is left to the individual entrants; if their particular route turns out to be the worst it is their own fault – not that of the organizers”. The difficulty the entrants face is that both the choice of route and driver nomination is unalterable after the entry closing date, that being about one month before the event. Tom Fisk was later to comment that he thought that the organisers hoped for bad weather for it was only the weather that makes the Rally really competitive.

The preview makes the Autocar look to possess precognition – the Athens starters of 1963 ran into a blizzard which caused whiteout conditions between Skopije and Belgrade and prevented every single one of the starters from getting through. These included the three top Citroen cars driven by Rene Trautmann, Olivier Gendebien and Claudine Bouchet. And the group departing Frankfurt were met by impassable roads within the city; only one road in the direction of the first control at Schweinfurt was found to be open and as a consequence only seven of the Frankfurt entries reached Chambery.

Preparing a team entry was quite an exacting task, although much of the documentation is similar to that in use today, albeit non-computerised. The organisers issued charts and instructions in French, but for the British competitors the R.A.C. provided a service that helped overcome some of the difficulties of meeting the regulations, establishing refuelling stops, acquiring the correct licences and “green card” insurance for cover when the vehicle was not actually running in the event; if a car withdrew along the Monte route the third party cover provided by race organisers automatically expired.

Refuelling and service stops were largely organised under contract to fuel or auto companies, and choices could be made as to preferred supplier. Allard’s Glasgow-start cars had service provided in Britain by a combination of Limmits Biscuits and Henlys (Dover Ltd) Austin Service. Henlys’ letter of January 1963 advises that for Glasgow “You will be provided with a vacuum flask full of tea, coffee or soup as specified by you… and also a supply of Limmits biscuits, all for consumption en route.” At Dover there was to be “free vehicle service… and a refreshment lounge where hot meals will be served is at your disposal.” The suppliers also provided a decorated HENLYS/LIMMITS vehicle carrying a qualified mechanic available for minor repairs on the Glasgow – Dover leg. Definitely not the standard of support teams expect today!

Tom Fisk still has the handwritten notes from Sydney wherein the team boss lists tasks to be done in preparation for the big event. The notes also highlight an excess of team members named “Tom”. Sydney overcame this problem by designating Tom Lush (Support chief) as Tom 1, Tom Fisk as Tom 2, and the mechanic as Tom 3, but always in French! Tasks are allotted for Tom Fisk and Sydney when changing wheels and practice sessions were scheduled just as today’s teams operate; and Tom is also directed to obtain his own chain lever and to practise fitting up to two chains per wheel. Tom Lush has the formidable task of organising refuelling stops, mechanics to be on hand, spare parts, and major support at stops on the Continent.

For this event the team is using chains designed by Sydney. The driving wheels had four hooks welded to the inside and outside and a chain was fitted across the most conveniently placed hooks, starting with the inside and using a large screwdriver to fit it under tension to the outside hook! The chains available at the time were difficult to fit, took time to remove, and were limited to about 30 mph: Sydney’s chains were not speed limited, took one minute to fit, and were shucked off when not needed by braking heavily.

The Glasgow starters ran into bad weather immediately and icy conditions prevailed all the way to Dover. The route south scribes a big letter “S” across the country and current maps show motorways carving direct lines where in 1963 competitors were battling snow on very inferior roads. Melrose, Rochester, Doncaster, Tamworth, Kenilworth, Bagshot, Tunbridge Wells and Sellinge all appear as way stations along the route. Later, in an interview for the Hampshire Telegraph, Tom Fisk says that the bad weather experienced in Britain before the Rally proved a blessing in disguise as it enabled the British teams to practice on bad roads, and that driving on ice “can be quite fun.” Tom also saw the weather as a great leveller: the bad conditions gave their car a chance to prove its worth, as less powerful cars thus had a more difficult battle with the handicap system.

On the Continent, freezing fog and rain provided major obstacles. At one point, ice five centimetres thick formed on the headlamps of their car. Sydney, however, saw the rally as being quite uneventful as far as St. Claude even though he and Tom were unable to get to a control in time to sit down to a proper meal and other vehicles were dropping by the wayside around them. (In fact, Sydney and Tom started in Glasgow at 0800 on Saturday and drove continuously until their arrival in Monte Carlo at 1400 on Tuesday, with Sydney driving the stretch Dole to Monte solo!)

The route from Boulogne took the British starters and the Europeans who started from Frankfurt, Warsaw and Stockholm south through Rennes, Angers and Bourges, and then in a northern arc through Avallon, Reims, Chaumont, Colmar, Dole, Saint Claude, and Chambery. Sydney, who by this time was an old-hand in battling adverse weather conditions, was later to write (AOC Newsletter, March 1963) “after St. Claude….for the next eighteen hours we were continuously on snow, plus a variety of other conditions to choose from: fog, falling snow and rain that turned into ice as it touched the car and made the route extremely slippery”.

Despite a wrong turn after St Claude in a section of the route that had been closed during the recce run, the pair pushed on in appalling conditions. Sydney summed up the leg in to Chambery, “To keep on time one had to press on immediately one left a control and keep on checking one’s times with great regularity (and) Tom watched the clock with just as much attention as I watched the road. We certainly would not have managed to keep on time if either of us had slacked off; it was the first Monte for a long time that both navigator and driver were fully occupied for so long”. Other interesting reports on this section included those of a works Mini-Cooper having to wait ten minutes at a level crossing and of Tony Fisher’s Reliant being delayed, and collecting a penalty, following an accident between a local motorist and a bus. It was generally accepted that 1963 was the most severe winter in living memory in Europe and that this Monte had become an endurance test rather than a rally. The joys of rallying in Europe in January!

Tom and Sydney took a compulsory thirty-minute break at Chambery and had a sandwich and coffee while the tyres were changed, but had no time for further food until the end (24 hours on) except for a cup of coffee at a Total service station along the way: at the finish they were too tired to eat and elected to sleep first and eat later.

Despite the gruelling conditions, all three Allard team cars arrived at Chambery without penalty. Now ahead of them was the 794km common route into Monte Carlo. The common route had been divided into six special stages, and within these stages there were special sections timed to the second to sort out a clear winner. For these stages the organisers applied a “factor of comparison” based on engine capacity and applied it to the times taken over the special stages: a system that has its critics. The Autocar sums-up these stages; “These are run on narrow, twisting alpine passes – nasty little roads….where there is no set average speed over these as there is on the separate routes – you take them flat out, and the faster you go the higher you will finish in the rally. There are precipitous drops to daunt all but the hardiest and most experienced of rally drivers, and many is the snow bank that hides a fang of unrelenting rock.” Of this section Sydney reported that they were regularly coming across cars in very odd places; in ditches, up the banks of snow, and down the banks. In one incident, a Sunbeam Rapier ran up the bank and rolled on its side just as Sydney was passing!

Unfortunately for the team, Doug Ray’s No 1 car (which had started from Lisbon) developed electrical problems after reaching Chambery without penalty, and this delayed them beyond the time limit. The Lisbon Cup, seemingly in their grasp, was not to be. While the six Lisbon starters had probably the easiest conditions of any, only three of them had reached Chambery to tackle the last 794 km to the finish but none of the three cars reached Monaco as finishers: a bitter blow to all after so much effort.

On leaving Chambery the first stage headed over the Chamrousse which was covered in black ice partly covered by a thin layer of snow. The second stage hosted a dense snowfall that caused snowploughs to be called onto the route. The third stage had Rosemary Smith taking the works Rapier over the edge and the crew needing hospital attention, and The Motoring News (31 January, 1963) reported that Timo Makinen (Healey 3000) was reduced to peering through a hole in the ice on his windscreen as freezing snow clung to windscreens with such tenacity that heaters and wipers couldn’t move it, and that the ice that was forming on the inside of the Mini-Coopers became so thick that it could be broken off in chunks and thrown away! And to add to the drivers’ miseries the N574 around Mont Ventoux became blocked with six-foot snowdrifts that defied all attempts to keep the road open. At this point only three of the fifty-six Glasgow starters who had started in front of Sydney and Tom remained in front, one of who was Alan Allard in the other Allardette. But Sydney and Tom were the only ones from Glasgow with a clean sheet!

The remaining stages held less formidable challenges for most of the remaining competitors, but the lack of sleep was starting to tell and some of the times were down on what might have been expected. Sydney wrote of this final stretch of having five or six minutes in hand at Pont Charles Albert but having that cushion disappear to only a few minutes at the border control at Monaco, despite there being only light snow in the final stages. Tom Fisk recalls that they were the first to arrive at Pont Charles Albert with time in hand and he puts it down to the fitting of Sydney’s snow chains when they had been losing time on that section. (The French marshals had some difficulty in believing that they had so many minutes in hand.) Towards the end, however, both the speedometer and the average speed meter both failed and the two drivers had to rely on their own judgment as to time /distance covered!

Sydney and Tom won the Glasgow Cup with Alan coming in third. The two surviving Allardettes were 1^st and 2^nd in their class, 2^nd and 5^th in the sports car class, but were only 32^nd and 49^th respectively in the general classification when the handicaps of the “factor of comparison” were applied. Sydney’s summing-up of these results was “Our supercharged Anglias (Allardettes) went very well, but being in Group Three and 1400cc rating, our handicap was such that we had to give Eric Carlsson a 10% start, in spite of the fact he drives 10% faster than I do anyway.” Eric Carlsson and Gunnar Palm in a Saab 841 were awarded the outright win in the 1963 Monte.

Sydney noted that this rally was voted the best for several years, a verdict that might sound surprising given the appalling weather conditions and only 101 of the original 296 starters being classified as finishers. And Sydney also noted how obvious it was that factory support was increasing rapidly and “getting out of hand”. But it was inevitable of course that things would change as marketing departments saw that success brought new sales and drivers became full time professionals in lieu of the gifted amateurs like Sydney and his contemporaries.

For the record, Volvo had the largest number of entries (32), followed by Ford (24) and Citroen and Sunbeam sharing third place (22). Great Britain had the greatest number of entrants (107), followed by France (77) and Germany a distant third (28).