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Arthur Senior RIP


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#1 Dick Dastardly

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Posted 12 February 2016 - 08:43

very sad to report that my Dad, Arthur Senior, passed away in Darlington Hospital Mon 1st Feb 2016.

 

Here is a potted history of his rallying career...

 

He competed on his 1st rally in 1951, aged 21, and from there his rally career took off. In 1952, the Morecambe Car Club was being formed, he was asked to join so he & Bob Baxter [navigator] became the 1st non-founder members of the club.

 

Throughout the 50s, he competed extensively in his road cars...often doing race(s) at Aintree or Oulton Park on the Sat, then an night rally followed by an autotest or similar on the Sun. Evenings were spent preparing the car and car club committee business. His regular navigators were the aforementioned Bob Baxter [of the Baxter’s Potted Shrimps business] and Cec Hall.

 

Leonard Lord, boss of Austin / BMC at the time, invited him and Bob down to the factory as Arthur’s success in rallying was giving the Austin name a lot of publicity....he gave Arthur a car of his choice to use in rallies. Sometime later, Austin / BMC set up a works team. Leonard Lord wanted Dad in but had said he wouldn’t interfere with Marcus Chambers’ choice of drivers. Marcus declined to have Dad in the team as he wasn’t “old school” and didn’t have any continental experience, which was true. When Dad did his 1st continental rally, he beat all of Marcus’s protégés.....

 

 

Probably the biggest event he did in the 50s was the ’59 Monte Carlo Rally...friend and rally rival Bobby Parkes had entered in his Jag, with Geoff Howarth as co-driver. Bobby went into hospital for an appendix op, he was advised against driving on the rally but he insisted on going, but laid out on the back seat. Arthur was drafted in as driver, he did all the competitive driving, they finished 8th overall and leading Jaguar to the team prize.

 

Another rally was the 58 or 59 Alpine, Dad cost him & Bobby an Alpine Cup by driving too fast! Think of a stage bogey time as the ideal time but getting penalised for beating it as on a modern historic regularity. The time was supposedly unbeatable and not expected to be beaten...but Dad beat it over the Stelvio. The organisers failed to spot this, didn’t penalise them.....fellow competitors like Anne Hall in a Ford, applauded their efforts and sportingly kept quiet...but a certain Maurice Gatsonides spotted and queried their time, thus the organisers had no choice but to penalise them, depriving them of an Alpine Cup.  

 

 

 One funny event was at Sherburn-in-Elmet airfield, an informal car event followed by impromptu racing up and down the runway.....Dad saw all the cars ahead of him take to the side and grass then he saw a De Havilland Rapide aircraft approaching them on take-off!! 

 

 

1960 saw a shift in that he took over the Brotherswater Hotel at the foot of Kirkstone in the Lake District. And he had a new car, an 850 Mini bought the previous autumn just after they were launched...he was the 1st in Morecambe to have one. But he couldn’t afford cost & time-wise to do much rallying. Fortunately, friends like Bobby Parkes and Fred Crossley, from Bentham, allowed him to compete with them in their cars. On the 62 RAC, Fred & Dad were in Fred’s Mini Cooper...halfway, they were 10th overall & leading privateer but by the finish they’d incurred time penalties leaving a service area having had problems re-fitting the sump guard, so dropped out of the top 10.

 

One regular couple who visited the pub were Les & Nell Cowan and son David from Manchester, who had a caravan in nearby Hartsop....Les caught the rally bug from tales of rallying, he bought a 1071 S and started competing himself and allowed Dad to use it as well. He & Fred used it on the 63 RAC, again top 10 and leading privateer at halfway, but gearbox gave up in South Wales a few stages from the finish in Bournemouth.

 

Despite not owning his own rally car, Dad was in his prime as a driver....this was borne out when he was drafted in to the works Reliant team in 1963. Bobby was already there, he and Dad [replacing a certain Roger Clark, who hated the Sabre so went to Rover] shared a car on the 1963 Spa-Sofia-Liege rally on which they retired due to electrical issues...this after hitting and killing a wolf in the former Yugoslavia. They teamed up again a few months later in the same car, complete with a wolf’s head sticker, on the 1964 Monte Carlo Rally. Disaster struck on the Col de Turini when a tyre blowout sent them off the edge and back down to the road they’d been on a few seconds previously. Fortunately, neither were seriously hurt but the factory got more publicity due to the strength of the car and how it stood up to being rolled down a hillside. If this hadn’t happened and they’d finished, they’d have won their class beating the big Ford Falcons etc....

.

Dad’s rallying career wound down shortly after his last event in 1966 and up to 1982, had no competitive involvement in the sport, but still took me to events like late 60s Players No 6 Autocrosses [sometimes he was Morecambe CC’s Club Steward at their rounds] and TV rallycrosses at Croft whilst I was a school kid. He’d moved up to Bishop Auckland in ‘67, taking over a garage in Toft Hill, on A68 a few miles from Hamsterley, even took me to that forest to watch Roger & Tony on their way to victory on the 72 RAC.  On 70s RACs, his garage was used by the SAAB & DTV teams for servicing before / after Hamsterley. Coincidentally, the DTV manager who booked the garage was Colin Francis [RIP], he didn’t know Dad then but in the 90s they competed together on historic rallies.

 

 

1982, he was invited to take part in a rally, The Golden 50, commemorating 50 years of the RAC Rally. He and Bobby teamed up again in a borrowed Mini, which he later bought as he had to do so much work to prepare the car. Thus began his 2nd rallying career, this time in historic rallying. There were a lot of old rally colleagues, who he hadn’t seen or heard from for 15+ years, some commented they recognised his driving style and he resumed friendships which lasted till now.

 

Aug ’82, whilst driving that Mini on an MCC autotest, he suffered a heart attack, he thought it was a sticking gearbox!! Things got so bad that in Nov ’84, he had a bypass operation...supposedly ‘guaranteed’ for 10 years, he survived over 31. His determination etc saw him leave hospital within a matter of days. Most people would change their lifestyle....not Dad, who with help from doctors and consultants / surgeons who supported his cause, regained his MSA licence and resumed rallying in the mid 80s.   

 

By the late 80s / early 90s, he was very much back in the swing of historic rallying, competing on events in the UK and Europe. He won the Morecambe Classic Illuminations in ’94 with Colin Francis, 37 years after winning it for the 1st time in 1957! This was 10 years after his bypass op, aged 65, beating drivers 1/3rd his age! He did things like Pirelli Classic Marathons 1989-91 and Rally of the Tests most years, as well as weekend events, with co-drivers Bobby Parkes, Les Cowan, Tony Mason, Colin Francis and Mike Wood. Stage rallies were competed on, events like Coronation rallies on Epynt [86] and Pembrey thereafter.....Rohan Stages at Oulton Park Nov ’87 between visits by the WRC boys on the Network Q.....and multi-day rallies like the Charringtons [90 – 92] & Rally Britannia’s [93-95] either in the mini, HOB 44D, or a recently built Riley 1.5, which often pitted him in the same class as Roger Clark in a Mk 1 Lotus Cortina! I sat in with him on quite a few of these stage rallies and the occasional road event, even gaining a Bronze Medal and Class win on the 94 Le Jog.

 

 

More health issues affected him in 2007, when he had another successful life-saving op at the Freeman in Newcastle, this to remove an aneurism from his aorta, 23 years after his bypass at the same place. He recovered from that and still went rallying, but concentrating on HERO / CRA rallies as they are closed to club and no MSA licence is needed. He felt he wouldn’t pass the MSA’s medicals including treadmill tests so wouldn’t get a licence yet could still compete on events across Europe or from one end of the British Isles to the other without one....ho hum!!

 

 

He struggled to walk far [his walking stick was made by Coopers, was quickly referred to by me as a Cooper S stick] and was a Blue badge holder but that didn’t stop him from competing, now with Chris Sheridan. He was unable to even bend down to say, change a wheel or stand for long over the bonnet, so needed a younger navigator, hence Chris [my co-dvr on stage events] stepping in as he is a better navigator than me and can operate the spanners [I’m no mechanic]. Dad’s last rally was in the 2013 RoTT, some 62 years after his first one..... 

 

 

Not a bad rallying career for someone who never took or passed a driving test! He was given his driving licence without the need to take a test whilst doing National Service at Weeton in the late 40s.

 

PS....I have a brother David, he is not the WRC co-driver David Senior....


Edited by Dick Dastardly, 12 February 2016 - 08:44.


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#2 pilota

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Posted 12 February 2016 - 09:21

Sorry to hear about your dad. It certainly sounds as if he had a full and enjoyable life. Thanks for posting. 

Nathan



#3 B Squared

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Posted 12 February 2016 - 13:49

Condolences for your loss.



#4 JacnGille

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Posted 12 February 2016 - 13:53

Sorry to hear your news.



#5 LittleChris

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Posted 12 February 2016 - 23:56

Sad news but a very full life clearly well lived and quite rightly you're justifiably very proud of your Dad's achievements.

RIP Arthur.

#6 Jack-the-Lad

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Posted 13 February 2016 - 06:02

Sincere condolences. Thanks for posting that very nice remembrance.

Jack

#7 Rupertlt1

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Posted 14 February 2016 - 14:27

Thank you for posting this tribute.

 

Here is #82 Jaguar, registration OKY 450, on the 1959 Monte Carlo Rally:

 

https://revslib.stan...log/vt224ss7710

 

https://revslib.stan...log/gd730kd2229

 

RGDS RLT