Forgotten Rally Photos
A Collection of Rare Professional Rally Photographs and Stories From 1975 to 1982
Photos Peter Smith, Words Jonathan Pulleyn
“A competitor was thrown out for not possessing a First Aid Kit. He returned and produced two Band Aids and was duly passed.”
Yorkshire rallying, 1982 style
You heard it long before you saw it. The unmistakable fury of a Ford Escort rally car, its hysterical induction snarl punctuated by the crash of stone against sump guard. It was nearly midnight in Dalby Forest and this was my introduction to international rallying. The sight of Björn Waldegård’s Porsche 911 had already converted me to the rallying faith. The speed was staggering, and yet it was that ripsaw wail, rising and falling through the pines, that really made me shiver. But the speed of the Escort’s approach was absurd, enough to make us step back into the sanctuary of the trees. The Cibie spotlights stabbed into the tall pines, then directly into our eyes as the car slewed out of control. A bang, the sound of snapping branches, and then silence. We ran to the little white car, wedged on its side at the top of the slope. The crew were uninjured but we had to help the driver to safety. He was in shock, unsteady on his feet, and he was muttering incoherently in Finnish. His name was Hannu Mikkola and this was how Mikkola’s Bend entered rallying folklore. That was over fifty years ago, when I was a teenage marshal but it’s a memory I savor. Mikkola died in 202, and now I can confess that I still have the Escort’s tax disc holder*, liberated from the wreck.
Forgive the long preamble, but special stage rallying has its own place in my heart. That is why I sometimes felt as though this book had been created especially for me. Peter Smith is the pro photographer who literally went the extra mile to capture the wonderful selection of images reproduced here. And Jonathan Pulleyn has interviewed scores of rallying folk to reproduce the memories that enhance the imagery. The large-format hardback covers what I think was the best era of British rallying, which was between 1975 and 1982. The sight and sound of the Group B cars that dominated rallying in the mid Eighties resembled a preview of the apocalypse, but the formula quickly became unsustainable. Too fast, too dangerous, and so expensive that only big manufacturers like Audi, Lancia, and Peugeot could compete.
Most of Peter Smith’s photographs are in black and white, and they are all the better for it. They are evocative of an era that was different from today, and not just from an automotive perspective. Rallying was huge in the Seventies, especially in the north of England where access to Forestry Commission tracks was easier than now, and much cheaper. Spectator safety standards were lower, often non-existent, and a laid back, laissez-faire attitude permeated every stratum of rallying. Look closely and you’ll see crowds of cold but happy rally fans, often only feet away from the road, and dressed in the ghastly synthetic clothing of an era that championed the cheap and cheerful.
The advent of the Ford Escort Twin Cam in 1968 had sounded the death knell for the Sixties’ popstar, the Mini Cooper S. The Twin Cam and its successors, the RS 1600, RS 1800 and RS 2000, dominated rallying for a decade, and are still common sights in club rallying today. The recipe was perfect—the Escort was affordable, mechanically simple, durable, powerful, and relatively easy to drive on loose surfaces and tarmac. In the 1990s I had a neighbor who rallied a Mitsubishi Evo, but he gave up once he’d grown tired of forking out eight grand for another trick gearbox. But my early Eighties’ neighbor (whose Mk 2 Escort is pictured in the book) spent less than that on the whole car!
You really need to like Escorts to enjoy this book as they dominated UK rallying and their hegemony only ended with the advent of four-wheel drive, turbocharged cars, with the Audi Quattro the template. Various cars attempted to disrupt the Escort’s rule, but few succeeded. The Triumph TR7 was a barely discernible flash in the pan, Datsuns and Toyotas were tough but usually slow, and only the Vauxhall Chevette HS and Talbot Sunbeam Lotus threatened to topple the Escort. You can see all these cars in this book, usually sideways and with a backdrop of pine forest, peopled by the fans who’d read the rally preview in that Thursday’s Motoring News. MN, as it was universally termed, was the principal source of information about rallying and every event would get a report in the next week’s issue.
This book covers an era where more Average Joes could go rallying than at any time since. Illustrations—and there are hundreds—depict farmers, small builders, or shopkeepers holding their rally cars in oversteering slides, sometimes with daylight visible under at least one wheel. Rally sponsors weren’t multinationals, and events had homely names like The Rodgers Carpets Rally, John Wilson Bathroom Stages, and the tongue in cheek Costa Di Plenti Rally. Enry fees were cheap too—The Tyneside Stages entry fee was £15, and that was for 80-stage miles! It might sound parochial, but you weren’t just competing against old friends and adversaries, because those lights in the mirror might belong to the battered Opel Ascona driven by Finnish World Rally Championship winner Ari Vatanen or the Dealer Team Vauxhall Chevette HS with his countryman Pentti Airikkala at the wheel. And if you were faster, even over a single stage, you could spend the rest of your life bragging about how you’d once beaten a Flying Finn.
The images are the reason you’d buy this book but the words add context and weight. Jonathan Pulleyn has interviewed scores of drivers and navigators and their memories punctuate the images. Some names are familiar—Malcolm Wilson’s M Sport has been winning WRC events for years—some were local folk heroes like Colin “Mad Dan” Grewer and others, such as David “Piggy” Thompson (father of Touring Car racer James) and Andy Dawson were regulars in MN rally reports. Rallying was never as big in the United States as it was in Europe, but John Buffum was the one American who did catch the bug—he’s pictured here on the 1982 RAC Rally in his ex-Michele Mouton Audi Quattro.
I confess that I grew misty-eyed savoring image after image of names, cars, and rally stages that were once so familiar to me. I attended at last half the events featured, and I still live ten minutes’ drive from the Yorkshire forest stages that once echoed to Twin Cams and 911s, Imps and Mantas. The woods are quieter now but my memories of rallying’s salad days were brought to life by this wonderful book, which I adored.
*Before 2015, cars used on UK roads had to display a paper disc as evidence that the road fund license had been paid.
Copyright John Aston, 2024 (speedreaders.info)
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