CHAPTER 20
I am still being invited to drive in classic and historic rallies, and I rarely refuse. Why would I? The idea behind these rallies is to relive some of the great events of the 1960s and 1970s, celebrate the cars we drove over long distances with little support, and then there’s the added bonus of meeting up with old friends. Because there is no pressure and plenty of help if things go wrong, reliving those rallies can be tremendous fun, most of the time.
Classic rallies are held all over the world. The Western Australia Classic Rally was established in 1992, and in 1994, when the first international entries were included in Perth, I was nominated to be the Driver of Honour. Perth is a beautiful city and I was delighted to be invited. I was told my navigator would meet me at the airport. I duly bought a bottle of Irish whiskey and a side of smoked salmon as a gift for the family. Unfortunately the lady of the house told me that they didn’t drink or eat fish! That was a bad enough start, but when I saw the state of the Hillman Imp I was supposed to be driving in a few days, I nearly turned tail and went home again.
My navigator was to have the car ready, and when I saw a wreck of a vehicle sitting up on blocks with a wheel missing and the other three not looking so good, I was shocked. ‘Don’t worry,’ he assured me. ‘I’ll fix it in time.’ I knew that was impossible but I said nothing and hoped for the best.
Our first engagement was a reception in Perth city. Once there, I confided in some of the officials that the car was missing a wheel and the engine obviously hadn’t been turned over in ages. People were trying to help and someone said they had spare parts but there were no tyres to be had.
I was naturally very upset because I had been brought all the way from Ireland to find myself with no car to drive. The young man in question was nice enough but he knew nothing about cars and he certainly wasn’t a rallyist. The press reception the next day was held in the Mazda Brooking showroom and by this stage I was ready to abandon the drive altogether. All the press were there and when they asked me what car I would be driving I told them that I didn’t know but it certainly would not be the Hillman Imp because it wasn’t ready. The young man wasn’t happy, but it was the truth and there was no getting around it. When the people who owned the showroom heard what was happening, they agreed that it was a ridiculous situation and insisted on giving me a brand new Mazda.
I arranged to meet my young navigator at the start of the rally, a few days later. We were meant to be starting number one car, but he arrived late and he had forgotten his shoes and I don’t know what else. I was livid and didn’t even want him with me, but it wasn’t allowed to leave your co-driver behind. We eventually started off and I had to keep asking him which way next. This is not what you expect from a navigator: they are supposed to give you direction. I thought it strange that there were no checkpoints along the way to stamp our cards and discovered why when we reached the first time point. Although a number of cars had started in front of us, when we arrived nobody was there. The checkpoint hadn’t even been set up because we had arrived an hour too early! Instead of following the prescribed route, he had just guided me by the quickest way on his map. I didn’t know whether I wanted to murder him or burst into tears. An official came along and I explained that we hadn’t gone to any of the checkpoints along the way. They overlooked it, because they could see that my navigator hadn’t got a clue. I suggested we follow one of the other cars after that fiasco, but it wasn’t a pleasant trip as he was sulking at this stage.
During the rally there were a number of special fun stages, and one of these was a two-mile circuit in a loop. We were the first to start, and my navigator, true to form, sent me in the wrong direction from the off. We should have taken the first left, but he told me to go right and when we got halfway up I saw that all the sign boards were pointing in the opposite direction. Suddenly, all the officials were waving us down. We were coming in the wrong direction and everything came to a grinding halt as I tried to extricate us. When we got back to the start, they wouldn’t let us do it again and I really didn’t blame them.
I am telling you all this to justify what I did in the end to my so-called navigator. A crowd of photographers were gathered, waiting to get the best shots as the cars arrived. At the end of another disastrous run I pulled the car up beside the photographers and told the young man to open his door. As he did so, I lifted my leg, kicked him in the beam end and booted him out of the car. He landed on his hands and knees in the gravel and all the cameras were snapping. I was so angry with him because we had this beautiful, powerful Mazda, which was so easy to drive, but he had ruined everything. Well, not quite everything, because we had a few driving tests with big open spaces and cones to be driven around, which was brilliant, great fun, and I did very well. I met him some years later and he was married with two children and he had by that time got the Imp in good order as he drove it from Perth to England.
One thing about my time in Perth I will never forget was the opportunity to meet some young people suffering from cancer, who were fundraising for a society called CanTeen. CanTeen is an organisation serving young people between the ages of 12 and 25 who are suffering with cancer. They were a wonderful group and I got very friendly with one young woman, who was mad about cars. We corresponded for a while until one day her letters stopped coming. I wish I knew what happened to her and can only hope she is well and free from that dreadful disease.
I drove a Sunbeam Tiger in the Mitsubishi Classic Marathon of June 1992, and it was a memorable event. Over six days the route went through Holland, Belgium and Austria and finished in Merano, in Italy. Stirling Moss was there that year, driving an Austin-Healey 3000, as well as Mike Cornwell and Anne Hall. The biggest challenge was the infamous Stelvio Pass, the last hill climb of the rally, which has 48 hairpin bends, and in some places the road is exceedingly narrow.
In a rally you can win or lose on a card stamp, and as we approached the control at the top I was so anxious to make sure we got our card stamped in time that I practically pushed Pauline Gullick, my long-suffering co-driver, out of the car. Although it was summertime, the snow was thick on the ground. There were two other girls driving an MGA and the competition between us was fierce. They were in the Royal Navy and I believe they had been living together for a long time. The rally was handicapped and as they had the smaller engine we had to catch them by 1 minute and 30 seconds on each stage. We beat them by 28 seconds overall, driving our Sunbeam Tiger. At the end of the climb, on the top of the mountain, we all got out of our cars and the nicer of the two came over to say well done. Across the snowy mountain top a spanner came flying towards us, thrown by the co-driver; I don’t know if it was meant to hit her or me!
I did that Classic Rally again in 1993 and 1994, and when David Duncanson, a Scotsman with a lifelong passion for the Tiger, asked me to attend the Tigers United USA meeting in 1997, I jumped at it. I knew nothing about the Club, but was soon to find out.
The first Tigers United was held in 1974 in Grants Pass, Oregon. It was established by Bruce Fountain of STOA (Sunbeam Tiger Owners Association). It is quite extraordinary how enthusiastic Sunbeam owners are about their cars.
The Tigers United meeting in 1997 was an amazing experience and brought me to the attention of the Americans in a big way. Ian Hall, former assistant competitions manager for Rootes, and I were invited to attend as special guests. It was arranged by David Duncanson and Norman Miller, an American and author of The Book of Norman, considered by many to be the last word in Tiger books. I flew to Los Angeles with Ian, who had driven the Sunbeam Tiger in European rallies extensively, and we got on famously from the off.
From the airport, we went to RMS Queen Mary at Long Beach and stayed on board for one night, where we hooked up with Graham Vickery and his wife, Ruth. Graham is a great friend and currently a trustee of the Rootes Heritage Trust.
Three cars were shipped from England: David Duncanson’s ex-works rally Tiger, a Tiger that ran in the 1964 Le Mans 24 Hours race and Graham Vickery’s production Tiger, the last one built.
Norman Miller lent us his own Tiger. I asked before we left if we had enough petrol to get us to the first stop and he replied that the petrol gauge read low and assured me we had enough. We hadn’t got far when I tapped the gauge to find it firmly stuck at zero and I knew we were in trouble. We were in the middle of an eight-lane highway, with huge trucks on either side of us. The little Tiger only came up to the top of the wheels of the trucks and it was quite scary to be down there, looking up. I managed to negotiate my way across the lanes and in front of us was a filling station up a steep incline. We stopped dead at the foot of the slope and the attendants came down and pushed the Tiger up to the pumps. Though it was nerve-wracking at the time, Norman and I had a laugh about it afterwards.
From then on everything was plain sailing and we arrived in Eureka, North California, three days later, after driving 700 miles upstate. I drove most of the time as Ian was a little erratic on the highways!
The Eureka Inn was our home for the next three days. Originally built in 1922, it had been splendidly renovated over the years, all black beams and white walls. There were no curtains on the windows, just slatted wooden blinds, which I do not like, but apart from that the accommodation was very good.
We had a great time in Eureka and the food and hospitality were wonderful. There were all sorts of fun events over the next few days, with everyone admiring all the beautiful Tigers. People addressed them as if they were old trusted friends. The love and care that went into maintaining those beautiful cars was truly amazing. I gave a talk one evening, recounting stories of the early years rallying all over the world, and it went down very well. Next day I impressed everybody with my performance in the Le Mans Sunbeam Tiger at a local race track, and by the end to my amazement I had acquired a few fans. Next day I gave drives to anybody willing to pay for the privilege and all the money went to a local charity.
It was attending the Tigers United event in 1997, in Eureka, that led to the invitation by SUNI (Sunbeams United National International). Before this, I believe the Americans didn’t appreciate or understand European rallying and knew little about my achievements. I am very proud to say I am currently the honorary president of the UK Sunbeam Tiger Owners Club.
At the request of SUNI, I returned to the United States many times. SUNI meetings are aimed at the US community of Sunbeam enthusiasts (Sunbeam being the marque range of the Rootes Group with the most sales in the US). Every five years, from July 1989, a group of enthusiastic Sunbeam owners and drivers have gathered together in various parts of America, from Colorado to South Dakota, for the SUNI. I was invited to attend on many occasions but there are two meetings I remember most vividly, one in Colorado Springs in 2014 to celebrate 50 years of the Tiger and the other in Park City, Utah, in 2004.
The SUNI IV in Park City, in 2004, was where I met the legendary Carroll Shelby, a car designer, racing driver and entrepreneur. Shelby had put a Ford V8 engine into the Sunbeam Alpine car in the early 1960s and he was there with the mechanic, George Boskoff, who did all the technical work to make it happen. They sat side by side on the podium and gave their version of events. George had flown in from Hawaii for the occasion.
The story of how a Ford engine was put into a British-made chassis is a remarkable one. Rootes’ USA west coast manager, Ian Garrad, the son of Norman Garrad, who was competition manager for Rootes, talked with Shelby, who said that he could fit a Ford V8 engine into the Sunbeam Alpine, having done similar miracles with the Cobra. This is where Boskoff came into his own when he explained that the firewall had to be modified to create additional space, along with new rack-and-pinion steering and more. These modifications allowed Shelby to fit a 260 cubic inch (4.3l), 164 horsepower V8 into the Sunbeam Alpine body, the result being the Sunbeam Tiger.
Brian Rootes, the son of Lord Rootes, knew what Ian Garrad was planning, but this had all been going on without the approval of his father. Ian had the Shelby prototype shipped over from America in July 1963. The Rootes team were testing the car, but Lord Rootes insisted on driving the car himself. It took only four hours, Shelby said, for Lord Rootes to decide to go ahead and he telephoned Henry Ford directly to place an order for 3,000 V8 Ford engines. That was the number of cars he estimated he could sell in a year. Jensen in West Bromwich in the UK was given the job of manufacturing the Sunbeam and produced 7,085 of them, from 1964 to 1967. That’s where it ended because less than six months after the Tiger was introduced, Chrysler, who had by this time taken over Rootes, dropped the car because they couldn’t bear to have a Ford engine in a car manufactured under Chrysler management (or so the story goes).
Shelby was guest of honour at the banquet at the end of the week and he turned up in dungarees and a check shirt, with a straw sticking out of his mouth. Well, I suppose that’s understandable as he started his career as a chicken farmer, and in any case the Americans didn’t seem to dress for dinner in Colorado. Shelby was signing autographs and charged $5 for the privilege, all the proceeds going to his charity, the Carroll Shelby Foundation, which financed organ transplants for children.
There were some interesting sightseeing and cultural events organised and one of them was a visit to a Mormon church in Park City. The acoustics were amazing, and as we sat and listened to the choir I was transported. I got chatting to an American woman, who told me that she had been to Dublin to look for two of their young missionaries, who had gone missing some years before. I remembered then that my mother used to feed two young Mormon men in her home in Dundrum. They had called at the door and she told them that she didn’t believe in their religion, but took pity on them and asked them in. Every Thursday evening they came for dinner for months until one day they said they were moving on to the north of Ireland and she never heard from them again. Soon after, my mother died and I couldn’t believe it when they arrived at her funeral. I told the American lady that I was convinced those two young men were the ones she had been looking for, and never found.
Graham Robson, the author of numerous motoring books, and I were guests on a trip to the SUNI VI in Colorado, in 2014, and were asked to give a talk one evening during the week-long event. One of the reasons this trip stays in my mind was because it included a drive up Pikes Peak in the Colorado Mountains. Graham and I were driven in an air-conditioned modern car by the man who lent us the Tiger to the top of the Peak, where the altitude left us breathless. We were advised not to jump out of the car immediately but to wait a while until we became acclimatised.
It is a 19-mile highway, which takes you up to a height of 4,302m (14,110 feet) at the summit, with 156 dangerous corners on the way. The road was gravel and only partly paved at the time although it is now fully paved, I believe. The scenery is breathtaking and inspired Katherine Lee Bates in 1893 to write that very famous American song ‘America the Beautiful’, otherwise known as Pikes Peak. There is a plaque in the visitors’ centre at the summit with the words of the song commemorating her visit there. The visitors’ centre was very interesting, with all sorts of memorabilia displayed. It was a wonderful experience, and before we left we were all given passports to say we had gone into space!
All the cars had to complete the ascent before we were allowed to go down again. The temperature at the top of the mountain was –5° Celsius, and halfway down it was hot enough to affect the brakes! Officials stopped all the cars at the halfway point to test the brakes. Our car was too hot and we stayed there for 20 minutes to cool down. The strange thing was we were in a modern car, but the Tigers were fine and the temperature didn’t affect their brakes.
In 2014 the Sunbeam Tiger Owners Club (STOC) organised a number of events throughout the year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the launch of the Sunbeam Tiger. As honorary president of STOC, I was asked to lead a touring rally from England to Monte Carlo. More than 30 Tigers set off from Calais and Pauline Gullick and I drove in an ex-works rally car, which, although well prepared, broke down 100 miles into France. Graham Vickery and his wife Ruth gave us their Tiger, while they stayed behind and tried to get the other car going. When I found that Graham’s car was left-hand drive and had been specially upgraded with power steering, which is unusual, I was delighted. I knew this would take the hard work out of the rest of the journey, or so I thought.
Coming behind us were Bill Rogers and Peter Valentine. Bill had come over from America for the event in his Tiger. We were up in the Alps when our throttle cable snapped, and that looked like the end for us. Bill and Peter pulled up and by some miracle they had a spare left-hand-drive throttle cable, which they set about installing. I stood on the sidelines doing nothing but urging them to hurry up. Eventually we were on our way again, and considering the mishaps I was happy when we came in third overall. It was a wonderful event and I enjoyed every minute of it. I adore the Tiger and some day I hope to own one.
The following year, in May 2015, in recognition of my win, 50 years ago, I was honoured to be invited by the organisers of the famous International Historic Tulpenrallye to take part, but unfortunately my former success was not to be repeated. The course had been extended since the time I won it, 50 years earlier, and now started in Italy and ended six days later, in Holland.
When I accepted, I thought I would be driving a Sunbeam Tiger with power steering. I had broken my collarbone a few months earlier, having tripped over some bedclothes in a hotel; no, I was not drunk! The doctors at the hospital put my arm in a sling, which I avoided using as much as possible, of course. The collarbone wasn’t completely healed by the time the Tulip came along and the car provided for me was an MGB, which I stupidly assumed would have power steering like the Sunbeam Tiger, but it hadn’t. Peter Rushforth, an old friend and rally driver, was a darling and had provided his beautiful 1965 MGB, liveried in British Racing Green, which signified the Irish connection, together with a man to be my co-driver, who, unfortunately, was not so charming.
I flew to Geneva to meet up with the car and my co-driver, who had driven the car from England. When I got into that MGB and started to drive out of the airport, every time I tried to change gear the car stopped. The man beside me was quite cross and asked in a most unpleasant voice, ‘Don’t you know how to drive these cars? Put it into gear first and then turn the engine on.’ But I knew something was very wrong with the car, it wasn’t just me, and I was right. When the mechanics had a look at it, they drained the oil in the clutch and refilled it. Apparently the MGB had been lying idle for 18 months and that hadn’t helped.
My co-driver kept telling me how wonderful he was as a driver and navigator and saying, of course, ‘Things were different in your day.’ Of course they were, you have better and faster cars now and more safety regulations in place, I thought. His patronising tone was so annoying and when, after a particularly gruelling stage where there must have been about 100 hairpins, he said, ‘You did that quite well,’ I could have killed him. The whole drive was turning into a chapter of accidents – not real accidents, but things just kept going from bad to worse – and my co-driver was a handicap. I got to the stage where I could hardly move my left arm, and that was the one I was using to change gear. Trying to haul the car around the hairpin bends was taking its toll on me.
After a long drive in the mountains, we came to a stop for lunch. I was red in the face and could hardly lift my fork. The TV crews were following us around and looking for an interview, but I couldn’t face it. I just put up my hand and refused to talk to any of them, which wasn’t like me at all. I told Peter I couldn’t go on as I was afraid I might put the car off the road and I didn’t want to take a chance. I think my co-driver was not sorry to hear this as the next thing I heard he had gone off to Germany, but he said he would be back for the finish.
I was out of the running, but I struggled on through a lot of rain, with the help of some lovely women marshals, who, when we came to a toll road, would get out and put the money in to save me having to get out of the car as all the booths were on the left and my car was a right-hand drive. When we eventually arrived at the hotel in Noordwijk, my co-driver hadn’t returned from Germany, as he said he would. All I wanted was to go over the ramp and receive my bunch of tulips! I borrowed a lovely young man to sit beside me in the car; into the finish we went and the tulips were duly handed over.
When I got back to Ireland, I went straight to the Beacon Hospital. The orthopaedic surgeon informed me that my collarbone had come asunder and he would have to put a plate in place to assist the healing process. I really enjoyed those few days in the hospital being fussed over – I needed them after the ordeal of driving through Holland with a collarbone in pieces and an unsympathetic companion. If I had had a good car, two good arms and a pleasant co-driver, I would have absolutely adored it.
In Easter 2016 a Circuit Déjà Vu was organised to commemorate the glory days of the Circuit of Ireland in the 1960s. It was a fun, one-day event, beginning and ending in Killarney, and covering some of the special stages of the Circuit. My co-driver was Mark Dixon, who I had last driven with 22 years before in a Classic Marathon to Czechoslovakia. He was charming and told me I hadn’t changed a bit! It was great to meet up with him, Jimmy McRae, Russell Brookes, Adrian Boyd, Paddy Hopkirk and many more of the drivers from the old days. We talked about our experiences in the 1960s and 1970s, shared a few drinks and a lot of laughs.
I loved all those classic rallies and I am very lucky to have been asked to participate in so many of them. The last 15 years have been full of fun and laughter, during which I have experienced some of the best times in my whole life. I have mellowed, and many people who know me well are happy about that! I am not competing against anyone any more and there is no need to prove myself. There is sadness too, when I think of Mary Foley and her husband, former leading Irish motoring journalist Brian Foley, old friends who are gone, but that’s life. The only close family I have left are my cousins, Jill, Celia, Hilary and Noelle. There are always there for me and we meet from time to time to reminisce. My wonderful cousin, Jill, has been a great support to me over the years.
I am so grateful to my friends, who look out for me through sickness and bad weather, and are always there when I need them. The friends I have are genuine and generous and I love them all. Larry Mooney, who I have known for many years, organised a surprise 80th birthday party for me, and I know all those old and new friends would have been there to celebrate with me, but it wasn’t to be. I was in hospital, getting another stent inserted, and I have to thank my good friend Janet Taylor and my neighbour Deborah Harpur for their help with that. I missed out on my birthday, but that doesn’t matter – I am able to catch up with everyone and we spend time together, setting the world to rights. I happily accept all the kind invitations in Ireland, the UK and around the world. Life is good and I am having a ball.
I have done my best to recall the many highlights and challenges I have encountered over the years and I really thought that nothing more of interest would occur. I have been given four lifetime achievement awards and I continue to give talks to interested motoring organisations, drive in classic car rallies, accept the odd accolade and make guest appearances at motor shows and dinners. Nothing out of the ordinary, until 2017, the year of my 80th birthday, when things took off again.