Seventeen

Upping sticks

By early summer 1973, I was packing my bags to go down to Essex to take up my new position as Ford competitions co-ordinator. I continued to live in the north, but spent four nights every week at various hotels in and around Chelmsford, returning home each weekend. On arriving that first Monday morning, I suddenly realised what a gigantic operation Ford Motor Company was. The welcome pack on my desk was about three inches thick, and full of rules and regulations for everything. I was given a number that would have to be included on every letter or memo I issued, and, indeed, on any expense forms, which had to be signed by two people above my grade. Henry Ford himself had a number, I was told.

Peter Ashcroft spent a lot of time introducing me to everyone at Boreham and elsewhere, but I did have a shock on my first visit to the multistorey head office at Warley, near Brentwood. Obviously, everyone at Boreham knew who I was after the RAC win, but I felt like a complete stranger at Warley. Surprisingly few knew of my RAC success. I would eventually visit Warley a great deal, working with the press office and other departments, and very occasionally meeting my ‘ultimate boss,’ the great Walter Hayes, who was so important in establishing Ford’s motorsporting pedigree. As has been reported many times, Walter was a man of great vision, and he and Stuart Turner were a magical team. I was honoured to be part of all this. One of the forms I had to complete and sign (not forgetting my Ford number) was for my means of transport. I applied for a 3-litre Capri, which became my ‘management role’ car. It was very welcome. Although I was sent to visit various Ford locations, like the huge Dagenham manufacturing plant, I obviously had to get my feet under the desk at Boreham Airfield where the competitions department was based. Pam Goater, who had worked with Bill Barnett for many years, became my secretary, and was really helpful in showing me the ropes. I knew most of the staff in the workshops as they doubled as rally mechanics during events, and of course I knew Mick Jones who was the workshop foreman and something of a well-known rally personality. Although I wasn’t shown any animosity or unpleasantness I always felt that some of the staff there were a little wary of me, and couldn’t understand why I had suddenly appeared out of the blue.

While my professional life was moving on quite dramatically, there were other major happenings in my private life – I was about to get married to a very attractive lady, Susan McBurnie. Sometime earlier her and her first husband had moved to the north-west of England, but had divorced. Sue had two lovely daughters: Jane was at boarding school, whilst Clare was at home. Sue and I married on 11th August, 1973.

We found a house in the village of Stock, but Essex is not as interesting as the Lake District or North Wales, where Sue had spent most of her life. It must have been difficult for her, as I was away at Boreham all day, and starting to travel away on Ford business. I owe Sue so much, and still do, for the world of motorsport is far removed from her own passions, which include fly-fishing, horse-riding, and gardening.

At the end of 1973, Sue and I had a belated honeymoon in Kenya. The Preston family were very helpful in recommending places to go, and booked us into a game lodge in the Tsavo Park, and at the famed Treetops hotel. We were loaned a Mercedes by Vic Junior and had a marvellous time, although Sue still remembers me dropping her off out in the bush and asking her to photograph me coming flat-out down a dusty road. She thought I was going to turn round and return after a few yards, but I actually disappeared over the horizon so I could get up good speed over a crest where she was standing. She was somewhat alarmed afterwards when we saw a pride of lions round the next bend! We also ran over a snake at one point, and I kneeled down to take a close-up photograph of the poor, dead reptile. Suddenly, the ‘dead’ snake shook its head and started to slowly squiggle away. When the photograph was developed back in Nairobi, I was told the snake was a deadly mamba, and, had it bitten us, we’d be ‘gonners’ in a matter of seconds! We did normal things, of course, like visiting the coast at Mombasa, and returned in time for a lovely family Christmas with Sue’s sisters, Janet and Ruth, and their families.

I was very busy with work, but also still co-driving, and in 1973 and 1974 I continued to have outings with various Ford contracted drivers, as I had in 1972. I partnered Vic Preston Junior on part of his British rally programme, and won the Arkell Rally held in Cirencester Park. On the Red Hackle Rally we suddenly encountered snow, which ‘Junior’ had only even previously seen on the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro; he had certainly never driven in it, and slowed to a walking pace as we hit the snow-covered roads. I urged him to go faster and get the feel of it, which he did very gingerly. “Bloody hell!” he exclaimed after a few lurid slides, “This is just like murrum mud at home.” With that, Junior accelerated and put up a very creditable performance, finishing not far behind none other than Roger Clark in a sister Escort RS1600.

Stuart Turner always wanted to find a female driver to emulate the great Pat Moss, and was impressed by Gillian Fortescue-Thomas from Dorset who, like Pat, had had great success on horses and was now racing Ford Escorts, beating the men at their own game. I was duly assigned to navigate her on various British rallies, and evaluate her performance driving a Ford Mexico. Gillian had great car control, as I would have expected, and we competed on a dozen or so night rallies together. We had moderate success, but I had the feeling Gillian was not too happy going quickly on narrow lanes between nasty stone walls. Stuart continued to search for a female rally star, and not long after joining Ford he instigated the ‘Find a Lady Rally Driver’ competition, in which the talents of 18-year-old Louise Aitken from Scotland were spotted. Louise, another former horse-rider, went on to win national rallies and have works drives for several manufacturers. After marriage to Graham Walker she became well known as Louise Aitken-Walker, and won the inaugural Ladies World Rally Championship in 1990, for which she was awarded the MBE. Louise hails from the amazing motorsport breeding ground of Berwickshire, along with Jim Clark and long-distance rally ace Andrew Cowan. Their local market town of Duns is well-known in rally circles, being the base for the Jim Clark Rally, which has run annually since the sixties and is one of the most popular events in the British championship. It is now the only event in mainland Britain to feature closed public roads. When I competed with Roger Clark in 1973, it was a mixture of stages in forests and on airfields, with some night navigation. I remember some very fast tarmac stages on the Otterburn military ranges, which featured blood-curdling crests. I also remember the Escort flying high in the air and landing so heavily that the magnesium alloy sumpguard hit the tarmac, and there were huge flashes that lit up the night sky all around us. After all those antics, Roger and I won easily ahead of Russell Brookes and John Brown, who were making their first outing in an Escort RS1600.

I was also asked to co-drive HRH Prince Michael of Kent, who had shown interest in rallying after successful seasons of bobsleighing. This was, of course, something of an honour, as I had not previously mixed in royal circles! It was agreed we would drive a Ford Mexico in the 1974 Seven Dales Rally, an event I had won two years earlier with Roger Clark when I first entered the Ford team. Prince Michael came over to Boreham to try the car and meet me (or, according to royal protocol, that should probably be ‘I was presented to him’). He was aware of my RAC win, and when he telephoned me prior to the event would announce “This is your driver speaking!” He said he really liked saying that. We got on well, and were having a reasonably good run on the various airfield stages, although on one stage I noticed Prince Michael was leaning to the right and groping about with his right hand in the footwell. I couldn’t imagine what he was doing but I soon found out! “I’m sorry about that, Tony,” the Prince announced. “My tin of cigars became stuck under the accelerator!” I’ve heard a few excuses in my time, but that was a new one to me! We progressed through the night, putting in respectable times through the Yorkshire forests until dawn, when a deceptive junction on the tarmac bit of a forest stage caught out His Royal Highness. There was a Y junction, and I shouted “Left, left.” The car went ‘right, right,’ then ‘left, left,’ and the next thing I knew ... the car was on its roof! This was a new experience for Prince Michael, and I won’t tell you the expletive he uttered, but you will be interested to know that royalty uses the same language as we peasants. Incidentally, climbing out of the tangle, I inadvertently stood on the Prince’s head.

The RAC Rally came around very quickly, and it was agreed that I should again co-drive Roger Clark in the November 1973 event. As winners the previous year, we would have the honour of being seeded at number one on the 200-car event. The other works cars would be for Finns Hannu Mikkola and Timo Mäkinen. New cars had been built for all three of us, featuring consecutive ‘000’ registration numbers. One of my jobs at Boreham was to organise registration numbers for new rally cars being built, and I was rather proud of this selection. The five-day rally would have a similar route to the previous year, and again be based in York. I don’t propose to ramble on about stage times, but I would just like to mention that we clocked fastest time on three of the first four stages, and were beginning to wonder if history could repeat itself.

It’s strange the little things that one remembers about a rally all those years ago. I don’t remember the location of every incident we had, I don’t remember much of the route, but I do remember driving every single road mile for the first half of the 1973 event, as Roger was not well and had contracted a virus. Individual teams did not have doctors in those days, but the RAC had appointed an event medical officer, and he was kindly attending to Roger at every control. Roger must have started to feel better towards the end of the first leg, as on our way up from the Barnby Moor control in Nottinghamshire he said he was hungry and didn’t want to wait until late evening to eat in the hotel, back in York. In some small town near Doncaster we spotted a fish and chip shop, so I stopped outside it while Roger went in and joined the small queue. Clark in racing overalls queuing in a fish and chip shop was an incongruous sight, to say the least! Eventually, he emerged with two portions of cod and chips wrapped in newspaper and passed one to me. I opened my package and spread it out across my knees below the steering wheel while Roger started to tuck into his. We then set off up the road section en route to York, eating happily. Nowadays, could you possibly imagine the number one car on a world championship rally carrying on like this? Those were the days, my friend.

Despite Roger’s ailment we put in some very good times, and had no trouble whatsoever. Things were looking good, but we had a wily Finn in our team, and despite carrying the unlucky number 13, Timo Mäkinen and Henry Liddon beat us into second place. It was a magnificent 1, 2, 3 for Ford, as virtually unknown Markku Alén, on only his second drive outside his native Finland, brought an Escort RS into third place. The car had been entered by David Sutton’s private team with support from Motorcraft, and the drive by the lanky young man from Helsinki was the drive of the rally. A new star had arrived! On the fourth stage of the rally at Sutton Park near Birmingham, Alén flew off the road at a deceptive bend that had also caught out Mikkola. Hannu broke a bone in his hand and retired, but Alén got back in the rally, albeit having lost a lot of time. He set off after the incident languishing in 177th place, and, quite incredibly, climbed to finish third. Everyone was delighted when we returned to Boreham, and within days I was despatched to Finland to find the mysterious Markku Alén and sign him up for our team, if possible. There was only one little problem: Markku didn’t speak a word of English. However, Ford Finland’s press officer arranged for me to meet Markku and his mother and father, who did speak English, and have afternoon tea at the Hesperia Hotel in Helsinki. The result of this little tea party was that I offered Markku Alén a measly sum to drive a works Escort in the 1974 Welsh Rally in May. John Davenport was the brave soul selected to co-drive, which must have been an ordeal, as neither spoke more than six words of each other’s language. Nevertheless, they won and Markku would become part of the team. I was also asked to find a very fast lady driver, Eeva Heinonen, and offer her a possible works drive. I did so, but a few weeks later received a note to say she was pregnant, so that was the end of that.

I made my first visit to the Arctic Circle in February to support our entries on the Marlboro Arctic Rally for Hannu Mikkola, Timo Mäkinen, and new boy Markku Alén, who had been given a car, but no money. The rally started in Roveniemi some 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, and was held over snow-covered roads and ice-covered lakes, and on tracks between high snow banks. The temperature was as low as -40ºC, and special additives had to be added to all the lubricants in the car to stop them freezing. When travelling through the night through tiny villages in Lapland, we could see buses and trucks parked for the night with their engines running so that they wouldn’t freeze up. Equipped with fur-lined boots, thermal underwear, and a fur hat, I felt a bit like an Eskimo as I waited for the cars in a deserted village near the Russian border. My eyes were watering and I wiped them, only to find all my eyelashes had dropped off. I suppose it would have been worse if I had decided to have a pee ...

Prior to the rally, I was taken by Markku in the rally car to give it a shakedown, and I will remember that trip for the rest of my life. Daylight lasts for only a very few hours a day at that time of year, so it was pitch black outside as I sat, strapped in, whilst this 23-year-old madman drove me at breakneck speeds through the frozen wilderness. I believe Antarctic explorers can suffer from snow-blindness. Well, I think I got it staring ahead at the tunnel of snow we were passing through at 90mph. Markku’s car control was remarkable, of course, thanks largely to the Hakkapelitta studded tyres that were made in Finland. It’s no wonder Finns have won more world champion rally titles than any other race – everyone drives like that over there. I’ve seen post vans and old ladies on bicycles going round corners on ‘opposite lock,’ and during this trip I was driving sensibly on a wide, snow-covered road when I noticed a flash of lights in my mirror and a huge timber lorry and trailer overtook me.

Whilst all my gallivanting was going on, Sue was usually at home and struggling with the claggy clay, for which Essex is famous, using her immense skills to make a nice garden. One early evening in spring 1974, upon my return from work at Boreham, we sat on the bench in our garden having a cup of tea when Sue told me the marvellous news that she was expecting a baby, to be born at the end of the year. I was, of course, delirious, and could hardly contain my excitement. I didn’t tell her what I had planned to discuss – that afternoon I had received a phone call from Junior Preston in Nairobi, asking me to co-drive in his works Escort on Easter’s Safari Rally. Instead I made the instant decision to decline the Safari offer and stay at home.