Archie Scott Brown displayed the same daring-do as the likes of Tony Rolt and Duncan Hamilton, two transcendent legends of motor racing in the 1950s who defied the odds.
Scott Brown also displayed their talent behind the wheel of a racing car. If not more.
His mother's case of rubella during pregnancy resulted in abnormalities at birth – no fingers on his right hand, malformed legs – that required more than 20 operations, but after that Scott Brown’s grit took over.
In his early 20s he began racing, proving himself to Brian Lister. Scott Brown’s feel for a car meant he could make it do things others daren’t. It was a dance. A fast one, too.
His dance was so fast that others used his own challenges against him. At the BRDC British Empire Trophy at Oulton Park in 1954 he was deemed unfit to race his Lister-MG, triggered by a protest from a competitor.
A year later he won the race for Lister – payback for his boss, and on the organisers, the RAC.
It was a very British affair, with a Bristol engine powering the green and yellow Lister, but it was not one created out of national pride. Nor was it bound by it. So when the light Maserati unit being used in the pretty A6GCS became available, it offered a solution to some lingering drag problems.
An entirely new, lighter car was created, shorter in height than the old Bristol engine alone, with disc brakes improving its stopping power. The Lister-Maserati, which took on the number BHL1 from that first Lister-MG and is currently on the books at Pendine, was eagerly anticipated back at Oulton Park for Scott Brown’s third tilt at the Empire Trophy.
An earlier outing that season had been canned owing to reliability issues, but the arrow-like new car proved quick if not consistent from the off. Drawn in heat two, some early hounding of leader Reg Parnell in the drum-braked Aston Martin DB3S died away, and in the final overheating revealed the still niggling teething problems.
Or perhaps it simply needed miles. Supporting the Aintree 200 GP race two weeks later, a mistake cost Scott Brown a podium. Bounding across the grass on the exit of Cottage slipped him back to fourth.
Still, it had been some month for Scott Brown. He’d led Stirling Moss at Goodwood, driving a Works Connaught and Motor Sport found cause to mention him in the same breath as Moss, Peter Collins, Mike Hawthorn and Tony Brooks as a rising star of British racing. It was just the second single-seater race for ‘the King Of The Four-Wheel Drift’, as Juan Manuel Fangio dubbed him.
Scott Brown and BHL1 moved on to Silverstone in May, where again he’d be on double duty. Runner-up in the non-championship Grand Prix race behind Moss was backed up by a class win in the Lister-Maserati far ahead of two Bristol-powered team-mates, claiming the team spoils for Lister.
Piston failure denied back-to-back class wins at Silverstone, retiring from the lead at Copse. The GP Connaught suffered the same fate while Scott Brown fought with the Ferraris of Eugenio Castellotti and Alfonso de Portago.
Another class win with the Lister followed in August, amid the pouring rain of The Daily Herald International Trophy at Oulton Park.
When Scott Brown returned to Oulton Park for the new season, entered again into the same Empire Trophy that had been a crux of his blossoming career, once more the machinery had changed.
The Maserati had offered chances of class victory; Jaguar power meant overall wins would be on the table. And so it proved: Scott Brown topped proceedings in the Lister-Jaguar. The Lister-Maserati, still unique, had been moved on and was now in the ownership of Ormsby Issard-Davies, bringing in Lister regular Allan Moore for the unenviable task of trying to replicate Scott Brown’s successes.
By 1960, following two further privateer owners, the Lister-Maserati moved into the collector realm and in 1990 moved Stateside. A Crosthwaite & Gardiner engine was fitted and it hit the track once more.
It has revived its trophy-winning times, too, claiming pots at Salon Privé and has returned to Goodwood Motor Circuit to renew old battles.
It is a unique pillar of motor racing history, just like Archie Scott Brown.