On this week #42: Pat Moss
Patricia Ann Moss-Carlsson, rally driver, died on October 14 2008. Her double-barrelled surname hinted at her motorsport credentials, as the sister of Stirling Moss, regarded by many as the greatest Grand Prix driver never to have won the Formula 1 World Championship and wife to Erik Carlsson, one of the stars of rallying throughout the Fifties and Sixties.
However, at a time when women were still viewed as an adjunct to the more famous men in their lives, Pat Moss had a fearless and unconventional approach to life which saw her enjoy success on four legs, as a member of the British Olympic Equestrian team and on four wheels, dominating women's categories on international rallies, winning several events outright against the world's best.
She inherited her racing genes from both sides, as her mother Aileen was successful in trials events while her father Alfred, a dentist by profession, was the first British driver to take part in the Indianapolis 500 in 1924. Born in 1934, Pat was five years younger than Stirling and their first common love was horses, with ponies part of their life at home on a farm in the countryside outside London. The pair were fiercely competitive and well known on the show-jumping circuit. "He teased me and we used to bicker like hell," Pat wrote of their relationship many years later. "We never fell out or anything, but I was the pain in the backside kid sister. Mum would say, 'Why don't you take Pat to the cinema?' 'Oh, I'm not taking my kid sister.' That sort of thing, but basically we got on very well. We both loved ponies and jumping and gymkhanas and showing, and we went with our ponies to shows to have fun. If we collected cups and rosettes as well, it was a bonus."
While Stirling soon decided he preferred controlling something with many more horsepower, Pat got to the very top of the show-jumping tree, as part of the British national team. She learned to drive at an early age on farm roads, but there was no sign that she would make the switch to motorsport until, in 1953 at the age of 18, her then boyfriend and Stirling's manager, Ken Gregory introduced her to rallying in the UK. She immediately fell in love with the sport and it kickstarted a career that would become a major stepping stone in the emancipation of women in motorised sports. The following year, having shown the trademark Moss ability, she competed in her own Triumph TR2. However, in 1955, when the Standard-Triumph company showed no interest in supporting her, she switched to MG who offered her expenses and a factory-prepared MG TF 1500. It proved to be a successful seven year partnership with parent company BMC, who derived plenty of publicity from a fast lady driver. That year, she competed in her first foreign event, the 1955 Tulip Rally in the Netherlands in an MG Magnette.
1958 was the year when people began to sit up and take notice of this determined young woman who seemed to be a match for the best male competitors. As part of the BMC factory team, she finished fourth overall on the prestigious RAC Rally in a Morris Minor 1000. Another fourth place soon followed in the gruelling Liege-Sofia-Liege Rally driving a brutal Austin-Healey 100/6, regarded very much as a “man's car,” being a big and very heavy sports car. The Liege event was something of a marathon, physically and mentally demanding and the rally world was surprised at how effectively Moss dealt with the challenge. She also secured the first of her five European Ladies' Rally Championship titles.
In 1960, she returned to Liege-Sofia-Liege, winning it outright, this time in an Austin-Healey 3000, which established her firmly on the front pages of national newspapers, rather than just the racing press. Forty years on from that historic win, Pat was present when her winning car was sold at auction for an astonishing £155,000 (Euro 185,000). The following year, she finished second in the RAC Rally, as well as picking up two third place finishes in the very tough East African Safari Rally in a Saab 96 and again the RAC in the Austin-Healey. 1962 was the year of what can be considered one of her greatest successes with outright victory in a Mini-Cooper in the Tulip Rally. (As an interesting sidebar concerning a sport with few female winners, just three years later, this event was won by Ireland's Rosemary Smith, another great competitor who in 2017, at the age of 79 drove a Renault Formula 1 car provided by the team during a track day at the Paul Ricard circuit in 2017).
By now and throughout the Sixties, Moss was an accepted front runner and she had also added “Carlsson” to her name, having first met her husband back in 1958. With star status, she was offered a lucrative contract by Ford in 1963 but it was a brief association as she switched to join Saab alongside her husband. They even wrote a book together, “The Art and Technique of Driving.” The birth of their daughter Susie in 1969 saw her career slow down, with just a few appearances driving for Toyota in the early Seventies, before she decided to retire definitively in 1974. Her competitive spirit found a new outlet in the 1980s, as she resumed her interest in horses when her daughter followed in her footsteps, becoming an accomplished show-jumper.
Pat Moss-Carlsson's achievements are all the more impressive when one considers how long ago they took place, at a time when so few women competed in motor sport. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact she came from an equestrian background, one of the few sports where women have always competed against men as equals. No other woman has come close, with the exception of Michelle Mouton, who took four wins on her way to finishing second in the 1982 Drivers' World Rally Championship.
