In the 1954 edition of the Monte Carlo Rally, like the 1939 one revisited last week, the weather did its utmost to spoil the spectacle by being “unbelievably good”.
All the routes bar the one starting in Athens were a breeze. The roads stayed dry and largely free of ice; northern France failed to muster its usual fog; “the Le Puy-Valence section, so devastating a couple of years ago, was merely fast but cautious going round the thousand and one corners of the mountain valleys”; and “the last section through the Maritime Alps was unprecedentedly free from snow, and regularity averages threatened only by worn ice on shaded bends”. Nevertheless, the Monte remained a “magnificent 2000-mile winter journey”. Indeed, the worst aspect was not the relative ease of the main contest but the new speed tests held after, which risked unduly affecting the result.