To mark the 110th anniversary of the Monte-Carlo Rally, McKlein-Verlag published a 400-page book about the most famous of all rallies at the beginning of December.
Entertaining texts, great pictures
Together with journalist Michel Lizin and the two photographers Reinhard Klein and Colin McMaster, former rally driver John Davenpoert tells the most exciting stories and the best anecdotes, writes about the most famous cars and the most successful drivers. Of course, each chapter is accompanied by a large number of historical photos that make the book very atmospheric. When an entire page measuring 29 by 29 centimetres is taken up by Denise McCluggage drifting her 1964 Ford Falcon through the snow, the scenery on the Col de Turini almost comes to life.
The texts for the individual keywords (e.g. "Mäkinen", "Lancia", "Casino") are written in English, German and French. It is pleasing that the amount of text has been held back somewhat in favor of the photos. The individual chapters are short enough not to be boring, but long enough to convey the most important information. It's mainly the little stories in the margins that keep the reader interested, such as the apple pie in the "La Remise" restaurant or the convoy of Italian trucks that accidentally lost their entire load of road salt on the track in 1983.
However, the keywords or chapters are not sorted chronologically, but alphabetically. This is problematic for a trilingual book in that the translations do not always begin with the same letter. In this case, the order is based on the English titles. So if you are looking for the chapter on "contraband", you need to know the English translation of this vocabulary, which is rarely used in everyday life. Incidentally, the chapter in question is about tires at the 1970 Monte.
Difficult navigation
Which immediately reveals the biggest problem with the book: the chapter names reveal very little about their content and are somewhere between a schoolgirl report ("The end of innocence") and band names from the New German Wave era ("Im äussersten Grenzbereich"). The title "Wiggle-Woggle" may sound particularly silly, but at least it has a good reason: that's what the English used to call the skill rides in the port of Monte Carlo in the 1930s.
With chronologically ordered chapters, there is nothing wrong with literary titles, as the timeline helps with orientation and an event can be clearly assigned to a specific point in the book. However, it is a bit of a guessing game as to whether Maurizio Verini's spin and the subsequent blockade of the track in 1978 can be found under D (or S for "spin"), M, V or B. And yes, this spin really did happen. And yes, this spin really does have its own chapter.
At least there is an index at the beginning of the book, but it only contains the chapter headings without a table of contents - and is also sorted according to the English titles.
The problem of the misleadingly sorted chapters would only be half as annoying if the book clearly differentiated between cars, drivers, track sections, vehicle technology and anecdotes in the form of closed topic areas. Unfortunately, however, Allard and Alpine are placed equally between apple pie and Athens. Audi can be found under Q like "Quattro". Austin with the four-time winner Mini is missing completely.
Conclusion and price
This lack of structure is really regrettable, because the texts are really well written, informative and pleasant to read; the anecdotes are interesting and often even amusing. Perhaps this is intentional, to entice readers to look through and read sequentially.
But if you then want to find a particularly successful passage again later (for example, to mention it in a book review on zwischengas.com), you almost despair. What is even more annoying is that it also makes it more difficult to find a particular image.
As a McKlein book, "Rallye Monte-Carlo" naturally lives mainly from its wonderful pictures, which make up for its structural weaknesses. In any case, "Rallye Monte-Carlo" is not a reference book for historians, but rather an illustrated book for nostalgics and rally fans, which you can open at any point to browse through a little. But it fulfills this task with flying colors.
The last 75 pages also contain one-page summaries of every post-war rally from 1949 to 2021 with the ten best teams and their cars. This will also please the amateur historian.
The book is on sale now and costs 99.90 euros. In addition, McKlein Publications is offering three special editions, each limited to 200 copies, on Walter Röhrl, Sandro Munari and Sébastien Loeb with a signature and their own cover picture showing the most famous race car of the respective driver. The content of the book is otherwise the same. Cost: 169 euros.
Incidentally, there is a comprehensive review of the first 80 years of the rally on Zwischengas .
Bibliographical information
- Title: Rallye Monte-Carlo
- Author: John Davenport, Reinhard Klein, Michel Lizin, Colin McMaster
- Language: German, English, French
- Publisher: McKlein Publishing
- Edition: 1st edition December 2021
- Format: 290 x 290 mm
- Scope: 400 pages, 530 illustrations
- ISBN: 978-3-947156-38-2
- Price: EUR 99.90
- Buy/order: Online at amazon.com, online at McKlein Publishing or via the relevant bookstore
