Mark Dixon remembers the celebrated Irish rally driver
WE’D PULLED UP at the rural Irish pub in search of a coffee during the 2016 Circuit Déja Vu and found a handful of locals propping up the bar. ‘Ah, Rosemary, what’ll you be havin’?’ said one of them without any preamble whatsoever. She’d never been there before and yet they all knew instantly who she was.
Such was rally driver Rosemary Smith’s fame in her native country – and far beyond. The 2016 event, celebrating the famous Circuit of Ireland rally, was basically a nostalgic fun-run, but back in the day the Circuit was a tough event: 500 stage miles in an 1100-mile lap of the island. ‘I think I did it eight times, maybe more,’ Rosemary told me: ‘It was day and night, day and night – really hard going.’
I’d first met Rosemary (who died on 5 December) on the 1994 Classic Marathon to Morocco, which led to a close friendship that included co-driving for her in a works Sunbeam Tiger and her own works Hillman Imp. She much preferred the former. Dublin-born to a garage-owning father who dabbled in motorsport himself, Rosemary was snapped up as a works driver by Rootes’ competitions manager Norman Garrad after her performance in a Sunbeam Rapier on the 1962 Monte Carlo Rally. Delegated at various times to a Rapier, Alpine, Tiger or Imp, she was usually relegated for PR reasons to the ‘women’s cars’, and in particular the Imp.
She made the most of them, nevertheless, winning the 1965 Tulip Rally outright in an Imp, which led to further works drives for other manufacturers: a Porsche 911 on the 1968 Alpine and Geneva rallies (she was heading for a second-place finish on the latter, until a brake line failed), and a Lancia Fulvia on the 1971 Monte – she did eight Montes in all. Then there was the 1968 London-Sydney in a works Lotus-Cortina, and the 1970 London-Mexico in an Austin Maxi (tenth overall).
Always
