1969 · Rallye Monte-Carlo

Rally Monte Carlo

A left-hand-drive Fiat 500 Gamine, entry number 11, on the 1969 Rallye Monte-Carlo. The smallest car in the field, and how far it got.

Compiled from the 1969 entry list and rally report, contemporary press and reference works. Full source list at the foot of the page.

In January 1969 a left-hand-drive Fiat 500 Vignale Gamine, carrying start number 11, lined up for the 38th Rallye Monte-Carlo. It was entered by G.A.M. of Monaco and crewed by two Monégasques, René-François Dulbecco and Yves Le Graverend. Nothing else on the entry list was as small or as slow.

Fiat 500 Gamine no. 11 at the start of the 1969 Rallye Mediterranee, driven by Dulbecco and Le Graverend, ringed by spectators
Start, Rallye Méditerranée 1969. Dulbecco and Le Graverend, Fiat 500 Gamine no. 11. Photographer unknown, vignalegamine.net archive.

Two rallies on one road

The 1969 event ran from 17 to 24 January and came with a catch. The European Rally Championship counted only cars from groups 1 to 3. To give more specialised machinery a run, the Monaco organisers set up a separate contest on the same dates, the Rallye Méditerranée, open to groups 4, 5 and 6, with about a dozen crews and its own classification. Both rallies used the same route, the same time controls and the same special stages.

The Gamine ran in that Rallye Méditerranée, which is why it wore a Rallye Méditerranée plate on its nose and Monte-Carlo lettering on its doors. Its rivals on that list were anything but modest: works Lancia Fulvias for Sandro Munari and Harry Källström, Matra 530s for Jean-Pierre Beltoise and Henri Pescarolo, Alpines for Jean-Pierre Nicolas. Källström and Gunnar Häggbom would win the Rallye Méditerranée outright. The FIA later ruled that running two rallies as one broke the spirit of the regulations, and struck the Monte-Carlo result from the championship.

Typed entry list headed Rallye Mediterranee 1969, showing number 11 G.A.M. Monaco, Dulbecco and Le Graverend, Fiat 500 Gamine, 590 cc
Entry list, Rallye Méditerranée 1969: no. 11, G.A.M. Monaco, Fiat 500 Gamine, 590 cc. Period document, vignalegamine.net archive.
A Fiat 124 Vignale coupe, Monaco plate E544, on a snowy mountain hairpin in the Alpes-Maritimes during the 1969 rally
The GAM Fiat 124 Vignale, registration E544, on a snowbound mountain stage; René Ambrosini and Oswald Peri ran it in the same Rallye Méditerranée as no. 9. Photographer unknown, vignalegamine.net archive.

The smallest car in the field

On paper the Gamine was a Fiat 500 dressed by a styling house: 499.5 cc, about 21 hp, 450 kg, a top speed near 97 km/h. The rally car was harder than that. The entry list records its engine as 590 cc, an enlarged unit, and the GAM competition cars had their engines built in Turin by Edoardo Zen and Franco Giannini, the tuners who soon after founded OTAS. It was classed in category VI, class A, the very bottom of the scale. The French press called it la Cendrillon de ce 38e Rallye, the Cinderella of the rally.

The Fiat 500 Gamine no. 11 seen from the side at night, badged Fiat Vignale 500 Gamine, in a crowd of onlookers
The Gamine no. 11 at the start. Photographer unknown, vignalegamine.net archive.

The weather

The going was treacherous. Heavy snow had fallen, then a hot sun took much of it away, and hard night frosts left patches of ice that one report called far more dangerous than solid ice all the way. None of the seeded factory teams finished intact.

As far as Marmande

Mechanical failure accounted for most of the retirements, and it caught three of the five Monégasque crews. Lionel Noghès lost a cylinder-head gasket. Raymond Rué and his wife dropped one or two pistons near Périgueux. The Gamine, in the words of the period report courageously driven by Dulbecco and Le Graverend, pushed on as far as Marmande in south-west France and then gave up with a lighting failure. On a rally run through winter nights, a car with no headlights cannot continue.

Scan of a contemporary French rally report describing the retirements, including the Fiat 500 Gamine giving up at Marmande with a lighting failure
Contemporary rally report on the retirements, naming the Fiat 500 Gamine. Period document, vignalegamine.net archive.

Selling smoke

The whole entry was partly a sales pitch. According to Alfredo Zanellato Vignale, Osvaldo Geminiani of G.A.M. Monte Carlo turned up with a rally-prepared Fiat 124 Vignale Eveline to sell smoke, drumming up support for Vignale cars on the Monte. It rescued neither firm. During 1969 G.A.M. went bankrupt, and the collapse dragged Carrozzeria Vignale into serious financial trouble, forcing Alfredo Vignale to sell the coachworks to De Tomaso. He died in a car crash within days of signing, in November 1969. The rally Gamine that lined up at Monaco has, to this day, never been found.

Two crew members standing behind a Fiat 124 Vignale with racing stripes, a GAM sticker and a Rallye Monte-Carlo rear-window plaque, Monaco plate E544
A GAM Monte Carlo Fiat 124 Vignale prepared for the Rallye Monte-Carlo. Photographer unknown, vignalegamine.net archive.

Sources

  • Entry list and rally report, “Rallye Méditerranée” 1969 (period scans, vignalegamine.net archive).
  • “Rallye Monte-Carlo 1969” and “Rallye automobile Monte-Carlo”, fr.wikipedia.org.
  • “The Monte Carlo Rally”, Motor Sport Magazine, March 1969.
  • “Vignale Gamine”, en.wikipedia.org.
  • “Brève rencontre: Vignale Gamine”, leblogauto.com, 2008.
  • Research notes on G.A.M., Edoardo Zen and Franco Giannini (FIAT 500 Club Italia; enthusiast-forum compilation).
  • Alfredo Zanellato Vignale, on the financial aftermath for Carrozzeria Vignale.

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