In the 1960s policemen everywhere, would bail up speeding drivers to ask, “Who do you think you are? Stirling Moss?”
Stirling Moss died recently at the age of 90 after a long illness, unrelated to the present plague. He always described himself as happy to be regarded as, “The greatest Formula One Driver never to win the world championship.”
In 1955 Moss at 25 made his claim on world pre-eminence by winning the famous Mille Miglia.
For those of you not into motor racing it is a spectacular 1600km road race through some of the most beautiful country in Italy. Moss finished way ahead of the field beating the world-famous Argentinian, Juan Manuel Fangio by a sensational thirty minutes.
You might have heard of Fangio. His was another name invoked by traffic cops everywhere. As in “Pull over Fangio. Do you know how fast you were going?”
I met Moss once in the eighties in London. A short, slight man, balding and charming, he was with a beautiful young woman who gave every impression of being bedazzled by his charisma and devil-may-care attitude. As were many.
“If you are not trying to win at all costs,” he would often say, “Then what on earth are you doing out there.”
Consequently, the playboy racing driver had as many accidents as girlfriends. He broke both his legs, severely damaged his spine and injured his brain. He suffered lasting nerve damage and impaired eyesight.
Sensibly he quit young, giving up motor racing for a successful business career in property development. He once said, “I knew if I didn’t get out, I’d kill myself and maybe someone else.”
And with that thought (having exhausted the sum-total of my knowledge of motor racing) comes the time to shift gear to the year 1992 and a tale about colliding worlds and random chance. For you never know who you might run into on a Sunday drive on a quiet country road in the northwest of Tasmania.
This is the scene as two quite different motor vehicles are closing on one another in peaceful rolling farmland near the tiny town of Moriarty.
One vehicle, a souped-up Ford Falcon is travelling at high speed, past blurred hedge rows and flashes of chocolate brown soil, roaring uphill and down through the green landscape this fine day in early March.
The driver of the Ford is Stirling Moss. He is too intent on memorizing every twist and turn of the narrow bitumen road to notice a familiarity of scenery: how much this pleasant land resembles his own English countryside.
At 150 kilometers an hour on an unfamiliar winding road he’s not here for the scenery. He is here to win an upcoming race and for that he needs to practice. In the coming days he will need to know every twist and turn.
Moss has been in Tasmania only a few hours, having flown from London and is likely tired and jetlagged and in need of rest.
But always he has that rule; “If you are not trying to win at all costs then what are you doing here?”
The other oncoming vehicle, a modest Toyota Corona (again unrelated to the present plague) is travelling at a much more sedate speed. The driver who is only five minutes from home is accompanied by his wife. They have enjoyed a rare weekend away together without the kids and are in no hurry to get back.
The Corona is doing only 80 kilometers an hour, almost half the speed of the Falcon but the closing speed of the two vehicles is 230 kilometers per hour.
The head-on collision destroys both cars. But it is the occupants of the smaller Toyota Corona who are most seriously injured.
Stirling Moss’s premonitions about what might happen if he continued to race have almost come true.
Moss was in Tasmania for the 1992 inaugural Targa Tasmania which he was fully expecting to win, driving the not yet released new Ford Falcon XR8.
It was to be a great coup for Targa Tasmania and even bigger for his sponsor Ford Australia. But the grand plans suddenly ended with a car crash.
This week the driver of the Corona, Malcolm Murray told me, “No one knew Stirling was here, least of all me. It was all supposed to be a big surprise. A secret marketing strategy. Out of nowhere Stirling Moss would win Targa and the XR8 would be launched with a huge fanfare. At least that was the plan.”
Malcolm Murray, to this day has no recollection of the accident from which he and his wife took years to recover.
Malcolm was a local electrical engineer and a pilot- instructor, married to wife Jan and with two kids.
“But,” as they say in the steak-knife commercial, “There is more!”
The bloke Stirling Moss cleaned up that sunny March day on Bonney’s Hill at Moriarty also turned out to be Sir Malcolm Kenneth Murray, Chief of the Scottish Clan Murray and the twelfth Earl of Dunmore.
Tasmanian born Malcolm inherited a British peerage which entitled him to sit in the House of Lords in Westminster. Accordingly, his wife Jan became the Countess of Dunmore.
In political reforms during the Blair era the British Government abolished hereditary seats in the House of Lords.
Malcolm retained his titles but lost his seat after making only two speeches in the House; one when he took his seat, the other when he gave it up.
Jan’s death five years ago was unrelated to the motor accident but according to Malcolm she never fully recovered. “Whenever we were out driving and a car approached, she became alarmed that we were going to have a head on.”
For his part, Malcolm considers himself lucky. “I don’t remember a thing about the accident. I’m a pilot and when I woke up in hospital all strapped up, the first thing I asked was ‘Whose plane did I crash?”
Malcolm was unconscious when the police arrived and had to be cut out of the wreckage. But he does remember and believes to be true, the wonderful story that did the rounds at the time.
The crash scene told the whole truth. It was clear the Ford was on the wrong side of the road and travelling much too fast.
So, the indignant traffic cop approached the driver of the XRB and asked the classic question.
“Mate, who do you think you are? Stirling Moss?”
The driver sheepishly replied, “Well actually …….”
Later in court Stirling Moss had a conviction recorded for failing to keep to the left.
He never returned to Tasmania.
Malcolm Murray still avoids the backroads during Targa.
charles-wooley.com 