Rallying
Rally is a form of motorsport that takes place on public or private roads with modified production or specially built road-legal cars. It is distinguished by running not on a circuit, but instead in a point-to-point format in which participants and their co-drivers drive between set control points (special stages), leaving at regular intervals from one or more start points. Rallies may be won by pure speed within the stages or alternatively by driving to a predetermined ideal journey time within the stages.
Liège-Brescia-Liège
The 1958 event was the only international rally of that era to be organised exclusively for cars with engines under 500cc. Races for small-engined cars were common at the time, but capacity limits for rallying were only used to differentiate classes: all other rallies, such as the Monte Carlo Rally, Tulip Rally, Alpine Rally and the "Liège-Rome-Liège Rally" were open to cars of all engine capacities.
Liège-Brescia-Liège therefore represents a unique, pioneering attempt to use rallying to promote economical, "green" transport. Following the Suez crisis of 1956 and consequent petrol shortages and rationing across Europe, many manufacturers and small volume car constructors brought out tiny vehicles offering transport for two to four people with very low fuel consumption. Some were primitive in the extreme, but others were surprisingly sophisticated.