Rootes Maestros "In their own words"

During the late 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, the Rootes Competitions Department was the most successful of all the British 'works' rally teams. Two formidably experienced team managers Norman Garrad, and Marcus Chambers carefully developed this team from a plucky bunch of amateurs into the most professional of organisations. Never before has the story of so much endeavour, and so much success, been told. Rootes not only won events as diverse as the Tulip, RAC and London-Sydney Rallies, but won major honours in Monte Carlo, Le Mans, Sebring, and the French Alpine, and set high-speed marks at Montlhery too. Drivers like Stirling Moss, Peter Harper, Rosemary Smith and Andrew Cowan all added their enormous talents to the cars themselves, and countless team prizes were won to emphasise the pace and reliability of the machinery. As in all good melodramas, the climax came at the end. In 1968, and just before the Rootes name was abandoned in favour of the 'Chrysler' badge, a Rootes car won the now-legendary London-Sydney Marathon. This was an ideal time for Marcus Chambers to bow out of the sport, and for the department to go into hibernation. In the 1940s and 1950s the time was ripe for Rootes cars to shine. Rally enthusiasts still recall the days when success in rallying was all about strong production cars, brilliant and versatile drivers, and a wealth of experience in the toughest of events. By returning again and again to classic rallies such as the Monte Carlo and French Alpine, Rootes set the standards by which others had to measure themselves. They also found time to go motor racing too — not only with saloon cars, but with sports cars at the Le Mans 24 Hour race. This, then, is the detailed story of how the Rootes team evolved, how towering personalities like Norman Garrad and Marcus Chambers kept on improving their breed and — not least, how drivers such as Stirling Moss made it all possible. Not only is this the story of the cars, and of the events they tackled, but (in their own words) of how the major personalities acted, and reacted, to the events they were asked to do. Those were the days when a good production car could be competitive, and when ultimate `homologation special' performance machinery was unknown. This well illustrated book, therefore, tells a story that was not matched at the time, and whose romance and versatility could probably not be repeated today.