A year-on-year account of the Isle of Man International Scooter Rally, including competitors and organiser’s personal experiences, and the controversies and difficulties experienced by the Rally Committee in what became a remarkable, 20-year chapter in the history of scootering sport.Supported by 180 images from the period.
A year-on-year account of the Isle of Man International Scooter Rally, the brainchild of WWI veteran-turned-politician, James Mylchreest Cain. Following a fact-finding mission to Dusseldorf, accompanied by Peter Agg from Lambretta, the second Rally went International for 1958, and was to grow in popularity throughout the 1960s, attracting competitors from countries as far and wide as Australia, USA, Rhodesia, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Poland, Czechoslovakia and India.
In addition to gymkhana and endurance events, closed-road and circuit racing attracted fast men such as Neville Frost, John and Norman Ronald, Ray Kemp, Andy Smith, and Norrie Kerr. In 1971, the then chairman of the Tourist Board, Bill Quayle, declared that the annual Scooterist week was “the most important cog in the mosaic of Manx tourism.” The author’s access to personal photographic archives, and Manx Press pictures, combined with period reports and interviews with competitors, builds a unique reconstruction of a hugely successful event on the scootering sporting calendar: an event that was to endure for 20 years and attract thousands of spectators.
Year-by-year account of the Manx International Scooter Rally
Ex-competitors and officials interviewed
Exclusive images from the Manx Press pictures archive
Content from Tourist Board press releases, programmes and Rally ephemera
Origins of the Isle of man Scooter Club
Research covered every column inch of the Manx Press on the subject
Features Rally reports with results, standings and awards
Created with the involvement of Works teams and officials, including Vespa and Lambretta
Many images researched from private photographic archives
Concise history of Scootering's longest running closed road event
