RAC Rally Action! (eBook)

Worthing, West Sussex resident, Tony Gardiner, is a highly experienced professional illustrator who has maintained a lifelong interest in motor sport, including club events, rallies, sprints and hillclimbs, as a spectator, official and competitor. Tony first became interested in motorsport in 1957 when the Ecurie Ecosse team of D Type Jaguars won at Le Mans. Other forms of motorsport, including rallies like the Monte Carlo and LiÈge-Rome-LiÈge, with competitors driving over Europe s mountain roads and snow-covered goat tracks at high speed, captured Tony s imagination. He quickly became aware of Britain s own RAC International Rally which covered some two thousand miles of British roads each November. As The RAC became more and more competitive with new forest stages, his interest grew. In 1964 he spectated at the RAC s start at the Chelsea Barracks in London and decided there and then that, next year, he would follow the Rally round its entire route. This started some fourteen further such ventures covering thousands of miles in a Mini Cooper, Vauxhall Magnum and a Leyland 1800. Tony even persuaded the Press Office of the Royal Automobile Club to issue him with passes and rally plates which helped him immensely getting in and out of stages quickly. The result of Tony s passion for the RAC Rally is that he amassed, between 1964-1983, over a thousand photographs in black and white and colour, plus a large collection of RAC Rally memorabilia, much of which is reproduced in this book.