50 years after the last Eigental mountain race, the 2018 edition is back
12/21/2016
Just in time for the 50th anniversary of its last staging in 1968, the Eigental hill climb will be relaunched on September 15 and 16, 2018 in Kriens near Lucerne.
This much can already be revealed: it will not be held as a championship hill climb, but as a sporting vehicle demonstration for cars and motorcycles. The great thing about this event is that it will be organized on exactly the same route on which the great racing drivers of yesteryear held their European Hill Climb Championship race.
The road has only been slightly widened since then and, of course, freshly asphalted, but the tight combinations of bends on the 3.8 kilometers or so are just like back then, when a certain Sir John Whitmore drove his Cortina-Lotus or an Arturo Merzario drove his Fiat-Abarth (see picture above) uphill.
It was probably the most important motorsport event in Central Switzerland. The spectacle had already begun before the war. The first races took place between 1923 and 1931. Later, there were three more events in the 1960s. The race, which featured international participants and was also advertised as the European Mountain Championship, always attracted around 20,000 spectators.
When the "Kriens-Eigental-Historic" sponsoring association was founded in the Hammer restaurant in Eigenthal, four former participants of the races in the 1960s also attended.
From left to right: Ernst Fischer, who drove a TR4 in 1964 and 1966, then Ruedi Caprez, who started his long motorsport career in a Puch in 1968, finally Koni Sterchi, who competed in a Simca 1000 in 1966 and in a Lotus Cortina in 1968, and finally Bruno Huber, who even entered the race in 1966 in a home-built monoposto with a 600 cc NSU engine in the Mini/Junior category.
