From the June 2023 issue of Car and Driver.
I first learned about Michèle Mouton when I was in my early 20s, about the same age she was when she first got into a racing car in 1973, the inaugural year of the World Rally Championship. The race was the notoriously difficult Monte Carlo Rally, and Mouton was driving for a friend. He said he didn’t know what he was getting into: “When he first asked me if I wanted to drive along to a rally, I said, ‘What’s a rally?'”
Michèle Mouton (at the wheel) with Fabrizia Pons during the 1984 RAC Rally in the UK
I work in a motorcycle shop and have never even heard of rally racing. One of the mechanics told me I looked like “that French lady driver.” I don’t, but I wear my dark hair in long braids and have a habit of glaring at people—so, pretty close. I saw him. A few vintage rally movies later, I was fascinated, both by Mouton and the rallying craze of the 1980s. Racing is a lawless, experimental car. It was an era of racing so dangerous that there was a documentary about it called Rallying: The Killer Years. Mouton is also a killer, ferocious behind the wheel of Group B’s Audi Quattro. Dubbed the Black Volcano and la femme qui dérange, she won the race with her co-driver Fabrizia Pons at one time and in a discipline that did not have any women at the top ( and not since).
Mouton would be angry that I said she was the only woman. In fact, he corrected me during a panel discussion at DirtFish Rally School. “I’m not the first woman to race,” she said. “Back then, it was the opposite of now: lots of women in rallying, not so many in road racing.”
“But you’re the first to win,” said another journalist, and I pointed out that Mouton had also done road racing, winning his class at the 1975 24 Hours of Le Mans. Mouton shrugged and gave a half smile. He is very modest. If I were Mouton, I would tell everyone “I almost won the Group B championship!”
He should. He entered the second-to-last race in 1982 trailing Walter Röhrl by just seven points. The morning of the first stage, he found out his father had died. His mother told him to race, too, and he did, building a lead of more than an hour over Röhrl. If not for an unwanted gearbox change, Mouton would have gone into the final race of the season with the championship in hand. He would win again, but he and Pons would not be in the title race, as 1983 was his last full season in the WRC. He never complains, but I will. It is impossible to win a championship when you are not sent to the race.
Michele Mouton
Even so, he continues to trouble regulars wherever he races. In 1984, he ran Pikes Peak, and in 1985, he won it, despite an unpleasant reception from other drivers and numerous fines and penalties from officials.
For Mouton, the stories are relics, like the trophy-like cobwebs he keeps in a cardboard box in his backyard shed. She is proud of being the first woman to win a WRC rally, but she thinks it’s a shame that she is still the only woman to win a WRC rally. She prefers to talk about her years as president of the FIA Women in Motorsport Commission, where she worked on ways to get more women into racing, an effort she remains devoted to.
Although he’s reluctant to look back, Mouton gives us a few stories about the good old days, recounting how he and Pons would cook foil-wrapped sausages on Audi turbos during the recce. “Two or three runs, and they’ll start smelling good.” He also told us his first ride at the factory—a Fiat 131 Abarth—was so difficult to drive that his hands would blister and bleed, and co-driver Françoise Conconi would have to reach over to pull the wheel to help make turns. “Everyone asks how I can drive a Group B Audi, a difficult car,” he says with a laugh. “It’s easy compared to the Fiat. It has power steering.”
Senior Editor, Features
Like a sleeper agent activated late in the game, Elana Scherr didn’t know her calling at a young age. Like most girls, she plans to become an artist astronaut vet, and comes closest to the latter by attending UCLA art school. He drew an image of a car, but did not own it. Elana reluctantly got her driver’s license at 21 and discovered that not only did she love cars and wanted to drive them, but other people loved cars and wanted to read about them, which meant someone had to write about them. Since receiving the activation code, Elana has written for numerous car magazines and websites, covering classic reviews, car culture, technology, motorsport and new cars.