Nick Haines drove in the Mille Miglia a couple of times, his first race being the 1948 MM in a Healey Elliot along with Rudolfo (Rudi) Haller. I posted on TNF a while back for information on Haller, but not a lot was forthcoming.
With regard to Nick Haines, there are a number references to him driving factory cars in the Mille Miglia (1950, DNF, accident), Le Mans and various other races, in Andrew Whyte's book "Jaguar: sports racing & works competition cars to 1953". However, there is no mini-biography of him in the chapter on works drivers. The only reference to him other than his race performances come at the start of Chapter 6 of Whyte's book, which starts:
"Of the first six works prepared Jaguar XK 120s, only two were ever used for rallying.
One of them, Nick Hayne's car, had a very short rally career ....
A month after finishing twelfth at Le Mans, Haines was back in France to take part in the Alpine Rally.
The Australian proprietor of a London garage, who helped set up Jaguar's Belgian agency, Haines seems to have been game for anything - at least until his TT accident ......"
That only confirms but does not add to the previous posts. There are also a couple of references to Nick Haines Belgian registered XK which was raced by other people, but no further details.
Anthony Pritchard, in his book Mille Miglia, refers to " ... the Belgian Aston Martin agent, L H (Nick) Haines ...". That was in respect of the 1948 MM when Haines drove the Healey Elliot. Whether he was the Belgian agent at the time of the '48 MM is not clear.
Haines drove one of the three Aston Martin DB2s at their first Le Mans attempt in 1949, and his was the only works car to finish the race, in 7th place, 3rd in class. There are a few references to his races in the two volumes of "Racing with the David Brown Aston Martins" by John Wyer and Chris Nixon, but nothing about him as a person.
I am always amazed that so many people raced extensively and even became works drivers, but left so little history behind them.
