HISTORIC RALLYING'S ELDER STATESMAN

In the close-knit fraternity of historic rallying, Bob Bean is a figurehead

- Paul Lawrence

In equal part a proper gentleman and a fierce competitor, he’s been rallying for over 55 years and will mark his 80th birthday next March. But the Yorkshireman is not for slowing down or stopping any time soon.

It all started in 1960. “I’d been messing about in cars for a while and there was a rally called the Yorkshire Rally running and I thought ‘I’d love to do something like that,’” he says. “So I got an entry and we started in Ilkley market place. It was a road rally with people like Peter Procter and Pat Moss and it snowed like hell. It went all through Friday night and finished on Saturday afternoon and three of us were in a Hillman Minx. I think we finished 29th overall. I’d not got a clue but I was hooked from that point.”

Bean was soon competing regularly on road rallies, usually in Fords, and gradually migrated across to special stage rallies into the 1970s. He took eight overall wins on Motoring News road rallies and another eight podiums at the height of the road rally boom.