Rosemary Smith

Rosemary Smith (7 August 1937 – 5 December 2023) was an Irish rally driver and driving instructor from Dublin, Ireland. She competed for the Rootes and Ford factory rally teams. As a factory team driver for the Rootes Group throughout the 1960s, she won several trophies in championship rally events around Europe. She competed in several endurance rally events around the world.

Early life Rosemary Smith was born on 7 August 1937 in Dublin, Ireland. She was the youngest of three children to a Protestant father and a Catholic mother. Her father owned a garage and was an amateur motor racer. She learned to handle a car, her family's Vauxhall estate, by age 11 while on summer holidays, long before she could legally drive. Smith attended the Loreto High School Beaufort in Rathfarnham, Dublin, but had little enthusiasm for the school on account of mistreatment from the members of the convent.

Career

Early career Smith's unconventional entry into rally driving happened in the late 1950s, seemingly by chance. She had been running a dress shop and boutique in the outskirts of Dublin when her friend and amateur rally driver, Delphine Bigger, invited her to serve as a navigator in an upcoming rally in Kilkenny. During that event, maps and navigating didn't suit Smith and driving didn't suit Bigger, so the two swapped seats, with Smith taking the wheel. The two entered several more rallies together, including the Circuit of Ireland Rally in 1959. In Smith's words, the two were "totally unprepared and inexperienced", but nevertheless enthusiastic. The Rootes team, who ran Hillman and Sunbeam cars, offered Smith a factory team position, turning her into a professional rally driver. The following year, 1965, marked a breakthrough in her career: alongside navigator Valerie Domleo, Smith won the Dutch Tulip Rally outright in the four-day, 1,800-mile event driving her Hillman Imp through snow and ice. Notably, in the 1966 and 1967 Shell 4000 rallies, which were 4,100-mile treks across Canada, Smith won the small-engine categories, the women's categories and finished 8th and 13th overall respectively. During that event, Smith demonstrated resourcefulness when her Lotus Cortina began running on three cylinders, thus losing engine power, while ascending the Khyber Pass, which runs from Afghanistan to Pakistan. Over her rally career she drove a variety of makes: Rootes cars (Hillman Imps, Sunbeam Tigers/Rapiers) initially, and later Ford Escorts while driving for the Ford works rally team, British Motor Corporation Minis, Opel Kadetts, Porsche 911s, Lancia Fulvias, and various Nissan/Datsun rally cars in various events. By the 1980s, Smith had largely retired from professional rallying. In the 1990s, she turned her attention to driving education by founding the Rosemary Smith Driving School, established in 1998. In 2018, she recounted her life and career in a memoir titled Driven, which she co-wrote with Ann Ingle. "Rosemary was a trailblazer who inspired many with her remarkable career," said Rosemary Walsh of Motorsport Ireland, noting that Smith “had the passion and the talent to succeed at the highest level, and her legacy continues to inspire drivers today." In 2001, An Post, the Irish national provider of postal services, featured her image on a postage stamp celebrating Irish motorsport heroes. In 2018, she was inducted into the Irish Motorsport Hall of Fame and received a Lifetime Achievement honor at the Irish Motorsport Awards. In 2022 she was admitted into the FIVA Heritage Hall of Fame, recognizing her distinguished career in motoring and lifelong contributions to automotive heritage. Her death in 2023 was met with widespread tributes. Irish President Michael D. Higgins praised her as a motorsport pioneer, and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar noted how she "drove straight through the gender barrier" in racing.