Alpine Renault author Roy Smith has had a go at all the fine and fun things in life
The Alpine that launched a series of books. Roy Smith gets drive in a ex-works Tour de Corse car in 1983.
By Pete Vack
Photos courtesy Roy Smith
Roy Smith has given the motoring world three very special, often brilliant, and thoroughly delightful books about Alpine and Renault in the space of the same number of years. That’s an amazing feat, his works are well researched, with hundreds of photos, first person interviews, diagrams, and fresh new information about a rare subject. There is no doubt they are landmark books on the subject of Alpine Renault. And if that’s not enough, his latest work on Gordini is due out in 2011.
Rallying with the Mini in 1967, near Aldershot.
Like many other enthusiasts of his age Smith got his first car kicks in a Mini having graduated from Mercedes W196, Gordini, Connaught, HWM, and Talbot Dinky toys, a hobby which would later materialize with a huge collection of things Alpine.
Smith is second from left at the back in 1974 with the rest of a young bike racing team. Today, his interest in cycle racing comes before all motor sports. No longer capable of racing, he still rides his bike 3 or 4 times a week for a couple of hours at a time.\
Smith’s Grandfather was to blame for his interest in cars, introducing the six year old to the cars of the Twenties he had enjoyed. His first car drive was a 1937 Morris 8 series 1 at aged 17. He immediately had a go at a race car school in a Formula Ford at Motor Racing Stables in the 1960s at Brands Hatch. In the same period he also was able to interview a number of important motorsports personalities including Ron Tauranac, Jack Brabham, John Horsman and met even more as he began writing for club newsletters.
Racing the Jedi single seater. Smith had three overall wins and 3 FTD in 1996. The Jedi was built by John Corbyn in 1995/6, has a space frame chassis, weighs under 200Kg with 180 bhp. Smith’s car used a 1000 cc Truimph engine, earlier cars Suzuki powered. 150 mph, 0-100 in three seconds.
For the next forty years Smith participated on and off in a wide variety of racing events both locally and on the continent and meeting people who would eventually help him put together the history of Alpine and Renault. Along the way he has owned 45 cars and 10 motorcycles; everything from Minis to Porsches to Alfas to Ducatis. Professionally, he was to become a company director specialising in sales and marketing, enabling him to support a wife and two sons. Taking early retirement in 2003, he gave up all forms of racing and decided to concentrate on writing books, selling one of his Alpine A310s to finance the venture.
Smith driving his Alpine A110 at Prescott Hillclimb, 1997. He won the multi class Paul Matty Classic Hillclimb championship that year.
He had first seen Alpines in 1968 but a watershed occurred in 1983 when in Annonay, France he met a car collector who showed him the wonders of an ex-works, ex-Tour de Corse Alpine A110 1800. “It was truly the business but I found it real difficult to drive. On the other hand it went like a bat out of hell on the mountain roads and I loved it.”
Smith raced his MV3, 350 Agostini replica for 5 years, here seen at Mallory in 2003.
At sixty three, Smith can see the full circle of life, for both better and worse as his wife died, far too young in 1991 sadly not seeing their youngest son Dominic graduate in Aeronautical Engineering at Imperial college.
Smith with Jean-Pierre Jabouille at Silverstone in 2009. Jabouille was a prime source of information when writing the three Alpine books.
Roy’s books will be a legacy as well. Twenty years from now, be it in on Kindle or Google, car nuts and historians will probably be fact checking and using Roy’s books as prime reference material and when challenged, they’ll be saying, “Oh yea, well let’s see what Smith had on that…”
With Lincoln Small who brought this car to the UK in 1988, at Silverstone in 2010. The R5 Turbo 1 was a prototype and is Smith's latest classic acquired in 2006.