Michel Pignard on his rally career: Alpine A110, Porsche 911, BMW M3 and 100 victories

For hillclimb enthusiasts, Michel Pignard is forever associated with prototypes, mountain roads and the relentless pursuit of tenths of a second. But focusing solely on hillclimbing would mean overlooking another spectacular side of his career: rallying.

In this new Live4Racing interview, Michel Pignard tells the full story of his rally career, from his first experiences in the 1960s to his 100th victory in motorsport.

NSU, Alpine A110, Porsche 911, Ford Sierra Cosworth, BMW M3: the cars alone read like a journey through some of the greatest eras of French rallying. But this interview is about much more than machinery. It is about drivers, roads, accidents, mechanical failures, extraordinary battles and the determination to keep going when almost everything seems to be going wrong.

It all started in the co-driver's seat

Before becoming a racing driver, Michel Pignard simply wanted to drive. His father knew customers involved in both rallying and hillclimbing, placing the young Pignard right in the middle of the motorsport world.

His first rally experiences, however, came from the passenger seat.

There was one major problem: he suffered badly from motion sickness as a co-driver.

Reading pace notes could become almost impossible. Yet he continued, including an early experience alongside Jean Cibille in a Renault 8 Gordini.

Unable to focus comfortably on notes, Pignard learned in another way. He watched. He studied the driver's feet, steering inputs and the way the car moved. He observed how experienced rally drivers controlled slides and adapted to the road.

It became an unconventional but invaluable driving school.

NSU and the first major results

By the end of the 1960s, Michel Pignard was competing with NSU. The cars were not particularly powerful, but their light weight and handling allowed him to demonstrate his speed.

By 1970, he had reached fifth place in the French championship.

Money remained a constant challenge. Pignard largely financed his own rallying, while support from NSU gradually helped with parts and technical assistance.

Speed was rarely the issue. Reliability was.

Broken components, lost wheels and mechanical retirements became part of the story. Michel Pignard could fight at the front, but bringing the car to the finish was sometimes another challenge entirely.

1971: taking on the factory stars with an Alpine A110

In 1971, Pignard moved up another level by buying a new Alpine A110 and entering the Lyon-Charbonnières Rally.

The legendary Berlinette was one of the defining rally cars of its generation: light, agile and exceptionally effective on narrow, twisting roads.

Pignard immediately showed that he could compete with some of Alpine's established factory stars.

He produced stage times close to drivers including Jean-Claude Andruet and Jean-Pierre Nicolas. A puncture in the Chartreuse section cost him several minutes, but he fought his way back to ninth overall.

His pace had been noticed.

The Alpine crash that could have ended very differently

At the Critérium des Cévennes, another dramatic chapter followed.

Oil reached the exhaust and the Alpine caught fire during a stage. The flames were extinguished and Pignard continued, eventually climbing back towards the front of the rally.

Then came a major accident.

While pushing hard to close the gap to Jacques Henry, Pignard hit a rock and the Alpine rolled.

Michel escaped without injury, but his female co-driver was thrown through the rear window and ended up with an arm trapped beneath the car.

It is a brutal reminder of what rallying represented in that period: extremely fast cars, unforgiving roads and safety standards far removed from those of modern motorsport.

Fighting the factory drivers on ice

Pignard's Alpine story also took him onto ice racing circuits such as Serre Chevalier.

Snow suited him. So did sliding.

With tyres comparable to those used by the factory competitors, he discovered that his pace could genuinely challenge some of the established stars. Once again, however, mechanical problems stopped what was developing into an exceptional performance.

Those experiences helped Pignard understand one fundamental difference between a private operation and a factory team.

To fight factory cars consistently, outright speed is not enough. The car needs the same level of preparation, strengthened components and constant rebuilding.

That required a budget he did not have.

Hillclimbing therefore became the main focus of his career, although rallying never completely disappeared.

Bandama, Golf GTI, Renault 5 and a rally career that refused to end

Michel Pignard continued to return to rallying whenever the right opportunity appeared.

There was the Bandama Rally in Ivory Coast, along with appearances in cars as varied as a Renault 5 LS, Volkswagen Golf GTI and Fiat Ritmo Abarth.

One event kept coming back into his story more than any other: the Lyon-Charbonnières Rally.

For a driver from Lyon, the event had a special meaning. In Pignard's eyes, it represented something close to his own Monte Carlo Rally.

Unfortunately, the “Charbo” also seemed determined not to let him win.

Porsche 911: back in the fight for outright victories

By the mid-1980s, Pignard returned with a much more serious weapon: the Porsche 911.

The pace was immediately there. Stage wins followed and Pignard was again fighting at the front against extremely competitive machinery.

The Porsche suited his driving style, although it required a very specific approach.

As Pignard explains in the interview, the 911 was not necessarily at its best on corner entry. The key was to carefully manage the turn-in point, position the car and then exploit its remarkable effectiveness once past the apex.

Even on extremely narrow roads, where the width of the Porsche initially appeared to be a disadvantage, Pignard found that the car could almost fly from corner to corner.

Ranchal: 15 kilometres with the throttle stuck wide open

Then there is Ranchal.

Of all the stories Michel Pignard tells in this interview, this might be the one that best captures both the era and the driver.

After an excursion into the snow with his Ford Sierra Cosworth, water entered the engine bay. During a long wait before the next stage, it froze around the throttle cable.

When Pignard started the engine at the beginning of the stage, the throttle was stuck wide open.

Retirement would have been the obvious option.

Instead, he started the stage.

For roughly 15 kilometres, Pignard controlled the car using the ignition key: switching the engine off to slow down, switching it back on to accelerate, braking, cutting the ignition and repeating the process.

And according to Pignard, he still managed to record the second-fastest stage time.

It is the kind of story that will never appear properly on a results sheet — and exactly the kind of story that makes this interview worth watching in full.

BMW M3: finally conquering Lyon-Charbonnières

After the NSU, Alpine, Porsche and Sierra came another icon: the BMW M3.

Pignard was not immediately convinced.

During his first tests, he found the car too soft and noticed that it had a tendency to lift two wheels when he pushed hard. As he jokes in the interview, he was no Rémy Julienne and had little interest in discovering exactly how long a BMW M3 could remain balanced on two wheels.

On proper rally roads, however, the car revealed its strengths: power throughout the rev range, a six-speed gearbox and a chassis that could be exploited effectively with the handbrake.

Most importantly, this time the Lyon-Charbonnières curse was finally broken.

In 1991, Michel Pignard and Franck Berruyer won the rally in their BMW M3.

After years of punctures, mechanical failures, snow, fog, crashes and missed opportunities, Michel Pignard finally added the event to his record.

And the victory carried even greater significance: it was the 100th victory of his motorsport career.

Rallying or hillclimbing: where did Pignard take the biggest risks?

His answer is immediate: rallying.

In hillclimbing, a driver can learn a specific road and progressively push braking points to the absolute limit. Rallying is different. Bumps, grip changes and unpredictable road conditions mean that a driver cannot consistently brake as late as in a hillclimb.

Yet Pignard admits that during his early NSU and Alpine years, he did not always leave himself enough margin.

Looking back, he believes he was not yet mature enough to manage an entire rally. He wanted one thing above everything else: to produce spectacular stage times.

Experience eventually changed that approach. He learned when to attack, when to manage the car and how to build a rally rather than simply trying to win every corner.

Perhaps the best illustration is that his first Lyon-Charbonnières victory only came when he was 46 years old.

Four decades of motorsport, told without a filter

This interview is about far more than results.

It is a journey through an era when the same driver could race an NSU, an Alpine A110, a Porsche 911, a Ford Sierra Cosworth and a BMW M3, compete on snow and ice, travel to Africa for a rally and then return to attack a hillclimb.

Michel Pignard tells those stories with humour, remarkable memories and the directness of someone who actually lived through them.

A stuck throttle, a huge Alpine crash, a sick co-driver in the fog, mechanical failures, battles decided by seconds and finally a 100th career victory: there is simply too much to fit into one article.

▶ Watch the full Michel Pignard interview on the Live4Racing YouTube channel to hear these stories directly from the man who experienced them.

For more motorsport stories, photography and behind-the-scenes coverage, visit Live4Racing.com and follow @live4racing on Instagram.

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