Pat Moss: Showjumper turned rally driver who won multiple championships

Pat Moss was a leading showjumper who later caught the automotive bug and went on to become a trailblazing women's rally driver. She won the European Ladies' Championship five times, and in 1960 she and her co-driver, Anne Wisdom, won the daunting Liège-Rome-Liège rally, the first time a major international rally had been won by an all-female crew.

Patricia Moss was born in Thames Ditton, Surrey, in 1934. She inherited a love of horses from her feisty mother, Aileen Crauford (just as her soon-to-be famous brother Stirling would inherit his love of motor racing from their father, Alfred), and quickly made a mark in the equestrian arena. As an eight-year-old she won many pony events, competing against her brother, and both were presented to King George VI after winning the Victor Ludorum at the 1945 Windsor Cup horse trials. In 1950 she was victorious at the Horse of the Year Show, and three years later she was presented to the Queen after winning the Queen Elizabeth Cup at White City. She went on to make the UK showjumping team.

Moss had her first driving lesson, courtesy of her brother Stirling, in a Willys jeep when she was seven, but in 1952, when she was about to turn 18, Stirling's manager, Ken Gregory, took her on a small rally. She was his navigator and they got lost on their way to the start. Despite this less than propitious beginning to her rally career, by 1954 she had graduated, via a Morris Minor convertible, which she admitted she thrashed, to a Triumph TR2. In March 1955 she was invited to drive a works MG TF on the RAC Rally and success there led to rides for MG in a works Magnette, then with an Austin Westminster in 1956 and a Morris Minor in 1957.

Spurned, to her chagrin, by the Triumph manager Ken Richardson, she turned to BMC manager Marcus Chambers in 1958, who first put her in a Riley 1.5 and then into the brutal Austin Healey 3000 in which she would truly make her mark with her co-driver Anne Wisdom. The latter was a great friend, the sister of the racing driver Tommy Wisdom, who had already played such a strong role in helping Stirling early in his career.

That year Moss rewarded Chambers' faith by winning the European Ladies' Championship, and in 1960 she and Wisdom won the Liège-Rome-Liège rally outright in the Healey. The following year, she began to compete in a Saab, via her growing friendship with the Swedish star Erik Carlsson, whom she would marry in 1963.

A tough and fast competitor, Moss blazed a trail for women competitors and achieved many strong results, including second on the 1961 RAC, third on the 1962 East African Safari Rally despite a collision with an antelope, and victories on the Tulip Rally and the Rally Deutschland. In the Dutch event she scored the Mini Cooper's first international victory. She would also win the European Ladies' Championship on four more occasions, adding 1960, 1962, 1964 and 1965 to that 1958 success.

A switch to Ford for 1963 brought the ladies' prize on the Tulip and Acropolis rallies and, following her marriage, she drove Saabs successfully with Liz Nystrom as her navigator until a move to Lancia for 1967. In 1968 she took a Fulvia to victory on the Sestrières Rally and finished sixth, the highest-placed Lancia, on the 1969 Monte Carlo Rally. That year saw her beginning to cut back on her competition career, however, following the birth of her daughter, Susan (who would become a noted showjumper herself). She had further works drives, for Alpine Renault and Toyota, before finally retiring from rallying in 1974. By then, Pat Moss-Carlsson had left an inspiring legacy for women such as Michèle Mouton and Louise Aitken-Walker, who followed in her wheeltracks.

David Tremayne

Patricia Ann Moss, showjumper and rally driver: born Thames Ditton, Surrey 27 December 1934; married 1963 Erik Carlsson (one daughter); died 14 October 2008.