Mike Taylor

Michael John Clifford Taylor was born on the 24th April 1934 and his father, who raced before the War, founded the Taylor & Crawley car dealership. The company sold Mercedes-Benz and Alfa Romeo cars from their Mayfair premises and after the War they became the UK Mercedes-Benz importers and main agents before importing Maseratis and then becoming Alfa Romeo dealers. Michael entered two World Championship Grands Prix, debuting in 1959, plus contested several non-Championship F1 races but his career effectively ended after suffering serious injuries when the steering column weld failed on his Lotus 18 in the 1960 Belgian GP and he was later successful in suing Lotus.

He started racing with an MG TC and at a Silverstone meeting in 1953 he had a win plus third and fourth place finishes. He moved on to a Jaguar SS100 then a Lotus 7 in 1957, though it was not competitive. His father bought him a new Lotus Eleven though stated it would be sold if he did not finish on the podium in one of his first three races in 1958. The car was prepared by Innes Ireland and he began to make a name for himself, winning a number of club races and had two second place results and two victories at Mallory Park and was tenth in the British Empire Trophy at Oulton Park. He was third and second plus had two victories at Goodwood, third in a National Open at Crystal Palace, won at Roskilde (winning over the aggregate of several heats) and was fifth and second at Brands Hatch. In shared drives, at Le Mans he and Innes Ireland had been leading their class until the distributor drive sheared on Sunday morning (after 162 laps) and he was tenth alongside Keith Greene with a Gilby Engineering car in the Tourist Trophy at Goodwood. In two outings with Alan Brown Equipe’s Cooper T45 he was thirteenth in the Kent Trophy at Brands Hatch and ninth at the Berlin GP at AVUS. His victories at Goodwood earned him the Motor Sport Brooklands Memorial Trophy, which had been won several years earlier by Mike Hawthorn.

There were two early races in 1959 with Alan Brown’s Cooper T45 where he retired from the British Empire Trophy at Oulton Park though was fifth the following week in the BARC Aintree 200 (plus took the fastest lap). In May he was fourteenth with a Cooper T15 in an F2 International Trophy at Silverstone and after taking pole he won the Grand Prix des Frontieres at Chimay (plus recorded the fastest lap) with a Lotus 15. In July he made his GP debut at Aintree driving the T45 though retired due to transmission problems after seventeen laps and he was scheduled to race in the US GP but he contracted jaundice and had to stand down. Driving Taylor & Crawley cars he was third at the Aintree 200 with a Lola Mk.1 and in early June he shared a Lister-Jaguar with Peter Blond in the Nurburgring 1000 kms though was fortunate to escape with slight arm injuries when the car rolled into a field. There was a return visit later that month to Le Mans, sharing a Team Lotus Type 17 with Jonathan Sieff, though the car retired after 23 laps (ignition). In further Lola Mk.1 drives he was second in the Silverstone International, third at Goodwood, the Aintree 200 and the Anerley Trophy at Crystal Palace plus fourth in the British Empire Trophy at Oulton Park. Lotus 15 drives saw victory in the Coupe de Paris at Montlhery and the GP des Frontieres at Chimay, eleventh in the British Empire Trophy and at Nassau in December he was fourth in the Governor’s Trophy and won the Preliminary Governor’s Trophy. The Lotus 15 continued to produce good results in 1960, including victory at Snetterton in March then second place finishes in April at Oulton Park and the Aintree 200. There were retirements with a Taylor & Crawley Lotus 16 at Goodwood’s Glover Trophy in April though he was twenty seventh and fourth in class at the Nurburgring 1000 km in May with Christopher Martin. He did not qualify for May’s Monaco GP Junior race with a Lola Mk.2 and after acquiring a Lotus Type 18 from Team Lotus he entered the BRDC Daily Express International Trophy at Silverstone but it was plagued by a misfire and he was not classified. He then took the 18 to Spa for the Belgian GP but he, and Stirling Moss, also in a Lotus 18, never started the race due to serious accidents in practice. During the Saturday practice session, Moss crashed heavily when a stub axle broke and he broke both legs and his nose, three vertebrae and several ribs. Andrew Ferguson, the Cooper team coordinator, told how “it took a long time for the ambulance to arrive for Stirling and, by this time, a queue of cars some 200 yards long had stopped at the scene. In an effort to hurry the arrival of the ambulance, Mike Taylor was dispatched to the pits in his Lotus, and unbeknownst to everyone, he disappeared at La Carriere corner.” Disaster struck when the steering column broke at about 150 mph and Michael was thrown out of the car and into a tree, sustaining multiple injuries. He broke his back, neck, both legs and arms and punctured a lung and though he eventually recovered it effectively ended his career. Innes Ireland, who was also racing a Lotus 18, recalled “Mike Taylor’s steering had broken and he went off the road on a 130mph corner. How he was not killed I can’t imagine. The car went across a damned great ditch, shot into the air, hit a tree which was completely uprooted, and finished up smack into another tree.” The race itself was a tragic one as two drivers lost their lives during it. Chris Bristow crashed his Cooper and perished in a gruesome accident and several laps later, Alan Stacey lost control of his Lotus, the car climbed an embankment and went through ten feet of thick hedge before landing in a field. He was thrown out of the vehicle and died from his injuries. Michael took legal action against Lotus and he eventually received financial compensation from its insurers and it was said that after receiving the settlement he threw a huge party in a hotel in Park Lane in London.

Although he never raced again, Mike did compete in several long-distance rallies and in 1968 he contested the first running of the London to Sydney Marathon. The route was over a 7,000 mile course which covered eleven countries and the P&O liner S.S. Chusan ferried the first 72 cars and their crews on the nine-day voyage from India, before the final 2,600 miles across Australia. Sharing a Mercedes Benz 280E with Innes Ireland and Andrew Hedges, they won the award for the first private entrant to reach Bombay though they retired in Australia. He entered the second London to Sydney Marathon in 1977 in a Citroën CX with Paddy Hopkirk and Bob Riley, where they finished third and took the team prize. Between these two events, he entered 1974’s London–Sahara–Munich World Cup Rally in a Mercedes Benz prepared 280E with Stirling Moss and mechanic Allan Sell, though it proved a perilous event after they broke down in the desert and were in a desperate situation. The Rally started from Wembley and went across the Sahara to Nigeria, then back north to Europe and around Turkey before it finished at Munich for the World Cup Football Finals. The number of cars entering was lower than 1970’s London to Mexico World Cup Rally as 1973’s oil crisis and the resultant drop in global car sales had its effect on motorsport budgets and many of the manufacturer teams of the 1970 event did not take part. It was said an error in the navigation notes for the event (caused by the end of a road in Algeria being extended several miles in between the compilation of the notes and the rally taking place) saw the majority of competitors becoming lost in the Algerian Sahara Desert. The majority of the competition did not complete the southernmost leg of the rally, south of the Tamanrasset rally point, and some competitors abandoned the route and found their own way out of Africa. Time penalties accrued during the stages in Africa meant that the majority of the field finished with over a week’s worth of time penalties and the winning Citroën DS finished over 28 hours ahead of the first of the factory supported Peugeots that finished second, third and fourth.

In an account by Vic Quayle in his book, ‘Stirling Moss-Rally Driver’, it told how they had problems from the start and “by the time they ended their rally Sell was ill with exhaustion, and Moss and Taylor were having to consider drinking radiator water or take their chances with rank water from an old well they found. As the hours trickled by and the sun beat down, there was plenty of time to consider their predicament in a remote spot in the desolate Sahara.” At the start of the Rally, Moss pressed on hard and by the time they reached Southampton they were twelfth of the fifty eight starters. A series of stages in Spain saw problems, where “the jack didn’t work, Moss was having problems heel and toeing (although Sell found an old shoe and wired it to the accelerator-it seemed to work), the light of the compass was missing (essential for Sahara travel), there were more suspension issues and other niggles reared their head.” After leaving Tangier, they faced two crossings of the Sahara but their rally was effectively over by the time the team had crossed the Atlas Mountains. “Moss had crashed the car into a washaway and broken the chassis, and to make matters worse the oil was gone from the gearbox, but Sell earned his crust and he kept them going. Then they had to stop overnight after getting lost in sand dunes and wait for daylight to find their way out. Sell was working overtime to keep the car rolling and they decided to avoid the loop into Nigeria and remain in Tamanrasset for R&R while working on the car.” After leaving Tamanrasset for Tunisia, after pressing on hard “the car couldn’t take the punishment it was getting. They suffered more punctures, the dashboard had fallen out, the shocks had to be changed, and Sell was utterly exhausted. So it was that they arrived at an abandoned Foreign Legion fort and decided to await rescue.” Unfortunately they found themselves “with little shade, virtually no drinking water, all they would have left was the water in the old well and the remains of anything left in the radiator. They were also one of the last cars in the convoy, however a Brazilian entry offered to take a message to the next control 800kms away requesting rescue. The team limited themselves to three cups of water each a day and sat in the eerie desert silence awaiting their fate…Back at Tamanrasset, fellow driver Andrew Cowan was concerned about the condition of some of the cars and crews and organiser Jim Gavin was persuaded to find a couple of vehicles and follow the rally north.” Evan Green’s 1975 book, ‘A Boot Full of Right Arms: Adventures in the London-Sahara-Munich World Cup Rally and Other Motoring Marathons’, tells of Jim Gavin’s search and subsequent discovery of the three men at Fort Serouenout. “Gavin’s party had seen no signs of life since leaving the settlement of Hirhafok and he was now sweeping the route towards the refuelling point at Fort Gardel, still 168 km away. Fort Serouenout was a tiny relic from the Foreign Legion days of French colonisation. No more than a square of crumbling mud and stone, it stood out only by the symmetry of its design in a region of vast plains and worn hills. Parked in front of the fort was a white car. And lying against one of the decaying walls, their bodies dappled by its shade, were three men. They had been there for two days and the three men-who had given away five gallons of water at Tamanrasset-drank the last of their supply as the rescue vehicles drove into view. Allan Sell was unconscious. All were severely affected by the heat.” Their 280E “had broken its shock absorbers through the Hoggar Mountains. The shaking had loosened the plates within the battery. They had been stuck in sand several times. Each experience had been terrifying, for had the motor stalled while they dug they had no means of restarting. Believing they were the last car on the road added to their worry. Waiting for rescue on a sandhill had no appeal, so they halted when they reached the fort. It was built on firm ground, where they could restart the car by pushing it in gear. They could have gone farther, but would almost certainly have bogged or broken down at some less hospitable place where their chances of survival were poorer.” Following the Sahara incident Moss and Gavin became good friends and when Gavin introduced him to lawnmower racing he was to be seen racing around the fields of West Sussex. Moss also did a 12-hour lawnmower race, partnered with Derek Bell.

Mike also had a career in property speculation but he passed away on the 4th April 2017 after a battle with cancer and his funeral was held on the 21st April at St Peter’s Church in Eaton Square, London.