One of the few January norms that isn’t utterly miserable is the Monte Carlo Rally. First held way back in 1911, it has served as an exciting, snowy-mountainside opener to almost every year since for rallyists.

Today, it’s a standard World Rally Championship round, but historically it was an absolute epic, with crews departing from various locations all over Europe to meet in the French Alps and sprint down to the waterfront in Monaco.

So romantic was the format for the first-ever WRC event in 1973 – but this was far from an auspicious inauguration. Just a glance at the final classification suggests why: 44 cars finished, 234 didn’t. Yikes!

This wasn’t the result of some horrendous pile-up, thankfully. Instead, they were disqualified en masse by the organisers. This was a highly controversial decision, of course, made worse by the fact that almost all of those affected were privateers who had paid a large sum for an experience.

The privateers had already been irked before the rally even started when the organisers had belatedly announced that studded tyres would be banned on the Col du Corobin mountain climb, due to concerns over them unduly wearing the road surface, thus requiring all to carry an extra set of rubber – a decision on which they relented after the backlash.

Then, on the third day, as has so often been the case on ‘The Monte’, snow and ice created chaos.

Privateer Ferdi Bökmann broke an arm crashing his Alpine A110 on the Concentration Run, and the stage had to be held up for an hour while an ambulance arrived. Later that afternoon there was a further delay in starting the Burzet Loop stage when a non-competing car had an accident.

Overall leader Bernard Darniche promptly buried his works A110 in a snow bank, then Björn Waldegård followed suit in one of Fiat’s 124 Abarths, all while the conditions deteriorated, harsh winds working to rebuild the snow drifts earlier cleared by ploughs.

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Some 20 cars got stuck on the stage, either having crashed or got stuck behind those that had. Ambulances and tow trucks had to be allowed in, leading to yet more time delays. And come 11.30pm the road was closed, blocked by snow.

Expunging the stage seemed logical, but instead the organisers decided that only those 65 cars that had made it through could continue, with the other 140 or so being disqualified for falling outside of maximum lateness.

‘This didn’t go down well’ would be a understatement. Indeed, a group of aggrieved privateers (primarily Italians and Germans) raced over to Gap and Digne with the intention of stopping the rally.

“The angry brigade blocked the road with their cars and service vehicles,” reported Autocar. “Some experienced competitors found another route without trouble, but others took to the fields to find a way round. [Datsun 240Z driver] Rauno Aaltonen found his way blocked three times and eventually called the police to clear the road.”

We wondered whether there would be further protests on the Mountain Circuit or the rally would be scrapped, but the organisers managed to calm an audience of hostile competitors, in part by offering them free entries for 1974.

We could then focus instead on the exciting battle unfolding between Alpine’s Jean-Claude Andruet and Ove Andersson, separated by just 14 seconds as they began the final stage – and it was the former who put in a “splendid time” to become the first-ever WRC rally winner.

Although a bigger talking point in the aftermath was yet another point of controversy: “The penalties for traffic infringements on the Concentration Runs and the number of radar speed traps and similarly aggressive police patrols which were in evidence later suggest that the traditional blind eye cast by French officialdom for le sport no longer applies.

In too many cases, drivers were tricked into breaking the law (by being waved across stop signs at junctions by police, for example) so that the ‘strength’ of the system could be proved.”