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Tony
Marsh, The Great All-Rounder
Tony Marsh raced against such people as Stirling Moss, Graham Hill and Jack Brabham in the late 50s and early 60s. He took part in the famous 1957 German Grand Prix (famous because it was Fangio’s last win and favourite race) and the 1960 Le Mans 24 Hour race where, with John Wagstaff, he won the Index of Energy award in a Lotus Elite. Tony also has an unbeaten record of six British Hill Climb Championship titles – two hat-tricks exactly ten years apart in 1955, 1956 and 1957, and again 1965, 1966 and 1967. The last three of these championships were in a home built car, the Marsh Special, which sported a home designed four-wheel-drive system for the 1967 hill climb season. The pressure of competition in that last year caused Tony to retire from motorsport to indulge in other pastimes before returning to motorsport in the mid 1980s. At last Tony has written his story which includes his sailing, flying and ski bobbing adventures as well as his motor sport history. Foreword People like Tony marsh don’t exist in motor sport today, more’s the pity. A Formula 1 driver will just do his eighteen Formula 1 races a year, filling in the rest of his time with testing, fitness training and PR work for his sponsors. A rally driver will only do rallying, an F3 racer will stick to his F3. If you race touring cars, that’s what you do. A British club driver will rarely venture abroad to take in European events. Even a hill climber will tend to concentrate exclusively on his own discipline. We live in an age of specialisation, not versatility. But versatility of a quite remarkable kind is what emerges from the life story of Tony Marsh. Not for nothing does the title of this book refer to him as The Great All-Rounder. This is a man who has set about half a century of motor sport with tremendous energy. He competed in Formula 1 races, witnessing from the cockpit the famous race at the Nurbürgring when Fangioo scored his final, and greatest, victory. He was third in the Brussels Grand Prix behind the works Coopers of Jack Brabham and Bruce McLaren. He did sports car and GT racing, and on his first visit to the Le Mans 24 Hours, in a Lotus Elite, he won the Index of Thermal Efficiency. He packed in a relentless programme of British racing, sometimes at two different venues in one weekend, and also found time to campaign with success in trials and driving tests. And then of course there was, and is, his hill climbing. This is a unique motor sporting discipline which has attracted its own supporters, and its own specialists, down the years. Tony Marsh stands alone in having earned the title of British Hill Climb Champion three years running, in 1955, 1956 and 1957 – and then again achieving the same extraordinary record all over again, in 1965, 1966 and 1967. What is even more extraordinary is that he achieved the second hat-trick in a car he designed and built himself, helped in 1967 by ingenious four-wheel-drive technology that also came out of the fertile Marsh brain, and went on to be much copied by others. Most remarkable of all, for much of his career Tony Marsh was taking part, and winning, in several of these disciplines in the same season. There has surely never been another driver, with the possible exception of Sir Stirling Moss, who has so completely explored, and succeeded in, such different areas of motor sport. Tony Marsh is a quiet, modest man. Until I read this book, I wasn’t aware of the other sports in which he has excelled, notably sailing, shooting and ski-bobbing – he was the long-time chairman of the Skibob Association of Great Britain. I knew he was a busy farmer, but I was unaware of his additional business interests. Nor did I know that he was an accomplished pilot. It’s all in this book, although I still find it hard to work out how Tony seemed to be able to do so many things at once, and do all of them successfully. His return to hillclimbing after 18 years away is also explained, and this book takes the story up to 2001. Happily, though, Tony is still very much part of today’s hillclimbing scene, at an evergreen 76 years of age. He continues to compete at a high level, and remains a familiar sight in the hillclimb paddocks with his delightful wife Liza and his immaculately prepared Gould single-seater. Tony has been around motor sport for more than 55 years. In that time, while doing what he loves to do, he has met and competed against countless numbers of people. Some of them have been very famous; some of them, like me, have just been minor amateurs enjoying themselves at a far lower level. To all of them Tony has been friendly, good-humoured, and also happy to help with any problem – but always fiercely competitive. His involvement in so many different areas of motor sport has enhanced them all. I feel fortunate to have known him for 40 of those 55 years, and to have been able to learn from watching him in action. I hope that he and Liza will continue to be part of the sport for a very long time to come. Simon Taylor The book is 234x156 mm, has 253 pages (including appendices), over 60 photos in b&w and colour and a Foreword by Simon Taylor. ISBN 978-0-9554826-0-1 Price £20
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