The end of an ERA: Philip Young dies

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The classic car world lost a larger-then-life character last Wednesday when Philip Young (67) died in a hospital in Bangkok after the injuries from a motorcycle accident at the Road to Mandalay rally. Peerless organizer and born adventurer Young founded the Endurance Rally Association (ERA) and the Historic Rally Car Register (HRCR) and was the driving force behind a multitude of endurance rallies and marathons throughout the world.

Young started his own rallying career in 1977 in the gruelling London-Sydney Marathon, which he entered in a car that became known as the ‘Scrapyard Special’. It was a Magenta that he’d built up himself using a £50 BMC 1100 sourced in a yard with the intention to beat the big works teams on a shoestring. The unlikely car did not finish after it missed a ferry in Madras, by which time Young himself was imprisoned in Teheran for going up a street the wrong way. But the little Magenta had made headlines since Young – a journalist by profession – just knew what the reporters liked. He did the 1980 Himalayan Rally in a Morris Minor he’d borrowed from the Archbishop of Canterbury and gained even more publicity.

After having tackled just about any rally from Monte Carlo to Paris-Dakar with anything from Skoda to Land Rover, he bought the Morley brothers' ex-works Austin-Healey 3000 for £9,000 and started organizing his first own rally in 1988. The Pirelli Classic Marathon came in the spirit of the 1950s and 1960s and proved a hit. It is now considered as the start of the historic rally boom which followed. More recently Young set a world record himself doing Cape Town to London in an 875cc Fiat Panda in 10 ½ days, proving once more it's not just about power. Many organizers have followed in Young’s footsteps, but there was only one like him. “If you have tried classic rallying it’s Philip you can thank”, wrote MotorSport magazine last year. And they were right. Safe journey Philip, wherever you go now.

(Words Jeroen Booij, picture Newspress)

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