The organiser of the daunting Liège-Rome-Liège Rally once proclaimed that his ideal was to create an event with single-figure finishers. Well, the brains behind the 1972 Bandama Rally in West Africa went one better by producing such a punishing schedule that there were no finishers at all!
This was only the second-ever Bandama Rally. When Bob Neyret won the 1971 event in a Peugeot 504, the result hardly warranted a mention, but the following year the rally achieved instant notoriety.
A total of 52 cars set out, but a schedule which most of the drivers described as ‘ludicrous’ quickly saw wholesale eliminations. When the teams protested that the time limits were virtually impossible to meet, the organisers simply shrugged their shoulders and flatly refused to modify the targets. Shekhar Mehta in a Datsun 240Z did manage to complete the route but was adjudged to be out of time, while Tony Fall in a Peugeot 504 actually finished within the time limits, only for the entire results to be scrapped following protests from the aggrieved Renault team.
In what was probably an attempt to distance itself from the 1972 fiasco, the event was subsequently renamed the Ivory Coast Rally.