British motor racing legend Alan Mann, owner of one of the most distinctive liveries on these shores, has died.
Racer and later team manager Mann was born in 1936 and his Ford Factory Team red and gold Fords became habitual front-runners.
Starting his Alan Mann Racing equipe in the early 1960s, it became dominant during that decade, winning the World GT Championship in 1965 with the Daytona Cobra.
The roll-call of greats who campaigned Mann's cars included Carroll Shelby, Jackie Stewart, Sir John Whitmore, Frank Gardner and Graham Hill.
The cars he ran got bigger and more impressive – including the spectacular Ford F3L, pictured with Mann, above – but for most he will forever be remembered for the smaller Fords and particularly the Escort and Cortina. It was in an Alan Mann Cortina that Sir John Whitmore scooped the 1965 European Touring Car Championship.
When he quit motor sport, Mann became a helicopter dealer, but was lured back to historic motor sport in recent years, even buying back some of his old cars in which his son Henry in particular has enjoyed great success.
We have now received these wonderful pictures – just how we would like to remember him – and the official obituary from Alan Mann Racing, so reproduce them all here as a mark of respect.
As soon as the Ford Escort became eligible for racing in 1968, the Alan Mann Racing Group 5 Escorts were an immediate and dominant force. Frank Gardner won the British Saloon Car Championship in great style that year, not just winning his class but also notching up some outright wins against the bigger-engined cars. Here he is lapping some smaller cars in a 1968 European event at the Nürburgring.
