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On FIVA and the technicalities of a rally

© Anubha Charan

Half a decade or so ago, it seems that someone suddenly noticed that old cars had wheels. Wheels that could carry them out into the world and turn back the clock. There was suddenly more to old cars than their acquisition and display. Vintage and classic cars were meant to be driven! And driven they were - in a steadily growing profusion of road rallies. Leading to the recognition of historic car rallying as an international sport, probably the only one that is popular across every geographical and demographic border.

This sporting movement achieved its first milestone with the birth of FIVA, or the Federation Internationale de Vehicules Anciens. Founded on March 1, 1966, in France, as an international federation of historic vehicle clubs, predominantly catering to historic "self-propelled road vehicles" of all kinds, FIVA became the only international organisation concerned with vintage and classic automobiles to be recognized by UNESCO.

The primary activities of FIVA today, as enumerated by its president Fransesco Guasti, are to influence legislation affecting historic vehicles, exercise control over vintage and classic motoring events and identify and classify vehicles. The broad categories place cars built before 1940 as "Vintage", between 1941-60 as "Classic" and those built between 1961-70 as "Recent Classics".

A non-profit making organization, FIVA also co-operates with two other large international road vehicle federations - FIA (Federation Internationale de l'Automobile) for modern automobiles and FIM (Federation Internationale Motorcycliste) for motorcycles.

Today, FIVA is comprised of 53 associations in 36 countries, [responsible for] appointing the [single] most representative club or federation in each country as its national representative, called "ANF" (FIVA National Authority). The ANF, in addition to representing the nation with respect to FIVA, that is, carrying the national votes at FIVA's General Assembly, is also in charge of issuing FIVA Identity Cards to eligible vehicles and of controlling FIVA events in the country.

Which brings us to the question of what exactly is a rally? Although all manner of events are run under the umbrella title of "rallies", the most popular ones under the competitive sports banner are Time-Distance-Speed (TSD) road rallies in which the route instructions have assigned speeds and teams are scored based on their ability to maintain these speeds over public roads. FIVA rallies are such events where average speeds do not exceed 50 kmph.

Also known as "touring" or "regularity" events, a TSD rally is a competition of precision driving - not a race - which often puts a great emphasis on navigation. These rallies are run in teams - a driver, a navigator and a car. The navigator has written instructions (called "Tulips"), which are used to follow a pre-determined course. His job is to get driver and car to the end of each stage at the right time. He warns the driver of the severity of approaching corners, for advance reconnaissance is banned, interprets the Tulips and computes to-be-attained speeds.

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