Fifty years ago today, Marquette found itself at the very heart of one of the fiercest battles in the history of the World Rally Championship.
The city in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was hosting a world championship round for the second year in succession. The 1974 Press-on-Regardless Rally was, however, a very different beast to the first one. Twelve months earlier Fiat and Porsche were non-starters, with no hope of defeating Alpine-Renault in the race for the inaugural WRC title (don’t forget, the drivers’ series was still six years away in 1973). Walter Boyce headed south of the border to register Canada’s first – and still only – WRC win.
Fast forward a year and a Sandro Munari Lancia win in Sanremo had blown the title race wide open. Lancia couldn’t confirm its trans-Atlantic flights quickly enough, flying a Stratos and two Betas to north America for a double-header to include Rideau Lakes in Canada and Press-on-Regardless in Michigan.
Fiat’s commitment to the 1974 series was absolute, with 124s confirmed for every round. But when all three of those factory cars retired in Canada and Munari’s Stratos won again, half of Italy’s north put its head in its hands.
There was plenty to ponder as the world championship made the 24-hour road trip to Marquette. One thing the cream of the WRC found on the shores of Lake Superior was a warm welcome. The Holiday Inn had never done such good business and even the Marquette Rotary Club got in on the act, inviting some of the higher-profile European team personnel to join their meeting.
While history shows the WRC departed Michigan half a century ago today and didn’t return, history also shows the event organizers put on a great rally in the face of some enormously difficult conditions.
Nobody, for example, could have foreseen a member of the local police force deciding to chase Munari’s Stratos into a stage after the Italian was a touch too brisk through a village on the road section. And when the sherriff crashed mid-stage, things got even more complicated. Sixteen of the planned 51 stages (including the 50-mile Carpenter Lake Road test – which actually ran back across the border in Canada) were lost when heavy rain turned torrential, washing bridges away and making many of the roads impossible to pass.
On finally arriving at the finish, final results were complicated by protest and counter-protest and even allegations of some parc fermé shenanigans from Fiat. Eventually, Frenchman Jean-Luc Thérier was confirmed as the winner aboard his Renault Gordini 17, with Markku Alén second and helping to revive Fiat’s title hopes (which were ultimately blown by Lancia winning the final two rounds, the RAC and Tour de Corse).
As the WRC checked out of the Holiday Inn on November 2, 1974, the overwhelming feeling was that the roads and the organizers deserved their place back on the WRC calendar. Sadly for the Upper Peninsula, it didn’t happen and America’s first world championship qualifier wouldn’t be back on the roster.
That didn’t stop the Press-on-Regardless, which remains as a road rally to this day. And it certainly didn’t stop the awesome rally community in Michigan, with the Lake Superior Performance Rally utilizing many of the same stretches of road down which Alén, Lampinen and Nicolas charged right up until this day 50 years ago.
