Tulpenrallye 1959

The story of 1959: This year the organisers decided to drop the approach routes and have every competitor set off from a single starting point. That made the route exactly the same for all crews, and a classification could be built up from the tests and the controls straight after the start. The rally was divided into two classes: one main group for standard and improved production cars, and a second main group for standard and improved Grand Turismes plus the special production cars. The number of entries was disappointing, with the British, German and Dutch crews in particular down on previous years. The start was in Paris, which meant that many crews could not set off in their own country. The division into main classes, which left competitors in standard production cars with little chance, was given as the main reason. During the rally 2,500 gendarmes were deployed to close roads and direct the traffic. Hans Tak started at number 1 in his Mercedes 300 SL. Piet Jetten and Louis van Noordwijk were beginning their ninth and their tenth Tulpenrallye respectively. Paris served only as the name of the start. The start proper took place at the Monthléry circuit, 25 km south of the French capital. The first part of the route led through new ground in central France. The mountain massif between the Auvergne and Valence made a striking backdrop for the rally. By way of Provence and the eastern part of the French Alps, with a climb of the Puy de Dome, the competitors reached Valence. The first night brought a section of more than 500 km to Bedoin in very poor weather, with no fewer than ten time controls in the first 300 km. The following day the field left Bedoin, the southernmost point of the rally, and headed north. The first special test, 21 km up the Mont Ventoux, was new to the rally and, with fog, hail, snow and a very strong wind, made for a challenge of its own. By way of the Chamrousse the route then went on to Switzerland, where a test was run on the Côte de Givrin for the first time in the Tulpenrallye. The sections in the Vosges were made exceptionally hard by fog and rain, and the fog played its part on the Route of a Thousand Bends in Luxembourg as well. The closing test at the Zandvoort circuit was run in poor weather, but brought no further changes to the classification. The rally would go down in history as ‘the Bleak Eleventh’. Hans Tak retired early on with a broken sump. Only four crews came through the first night leg to Bedoin without penalty points. On a test in the Vosges Joop van Nieuwenhuijsen met three deer. He managed to avoid the first two, but hit the third square on. The collision left the heavy animal in among the stones. Ten minutes later the deer had been cleared from the road, the stones had been stacked up again and Van Nieuwenhuijsen drove on. Cees den Ouden lost two hours when a boy of sixteen, startled by the passing cars, tripped and fell. He sprained his thumb; the police established that the boy would be unable to work for a month and on that basis put Den Ouden in prison. It cost him two hours and 10,000 francs to be released on bail. At Noordwijk three crews had the penalty points they had picked up on the tests wrongly written off: Morley, Ballisat and Wallwork. Several problems with the timekeeping on the rally and at various controls led to a great many protests. More than ten hours of unbroken deliberation over those protests finally produced a result. Morley/Morley/Hercock in a Jaguar 3.4 were the winners of this eleventh edition, despite a number of protests. The Coupe des Dames went to the Norwegian Greta Molander, together with Helga Lundberg, in a Saab. Wiedouw and Gorris were the highest-placed Dutch crew. The English won the Nations Trophy. Afterwards the organisers realised that a rally run along these lines might well be digging its own grave. The most outspoken drivers — the leading ones, that is — had been asking for years for an edition as hard as this, but for most amateurs it went too far, and run this way the fun soon went out of it. The class structure applied this year was another reason why the event appealed less to amateurs whose car had to do duty on the ordinary road for the rest of the year.