We at Diagonal Comms are proud to announce a new client, Alan Mann Racing, one of the great racing teams of the 1960s, which today specialises in historic racing and is still building, prepping and selling winning cars
Alan Mann Racing has won numerous major championships in its illustrious history, including the British Saloon Car Championship (twice), the European Touring Car Challenge and the FIA World GT Championship for Manufacturers, all with a variety of specially prepared Ford cars. Many of the leading race and rally drivers of the 1960s raced cars prepared and entered by Alan Mann Racing, including Jackie Stewart, Graham Hill, Bruce McLaren, Jacky Ickx, Frank Gardner, John Whitmore and Bosse Ljungfeldt. The company also did film work – it is a little-known fact that it built the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car that was featured prominently in the film of the same name.
Alan Mann himself was born in 1936 and became an accomplished amateur racer in the late 1950s, campaigning an HWM Alta among other machines. In those days racing drivers were every bit as talented and as fast as they are today, and arguably braver owing to the extremely rudimentary safety provisions of the time, but most of them had to learn to be jacks of all trades (mechanical engineering in particular) as well as masters of one (race driving). So it was that Alan Mann gained his apprenticeship in the motor trade in partnership with his good friend and fellow racer, Roy Pierpoint. Together they ran the Wayside Garage at Rusper, West Sussex, UK, and would go racing at weekends.
The link with Ford began in 1962 when Alan Mann joined the Ford dealership, Andrews of Southwick, also in West Sussex. He rapidly improved its sales operation and quickly established an Andrews of Southwick race team. It was immediately successful and that success led to an invitation from Ford USA to take part in the Marlboro 12 Hours race in Maryland, USA, in 1963. Alan Mann Racing’s car beat the factory-entered Ford Falcons, which mightily impressed Ford’s top brass. Indeed, that sensational result was what Alan Mann needed to springboard his way forward, and in 1964, at the age of just 27, he decided to go it alone and set up Alan Mann Racing, based in Byfleet, Surrey.
The rest is history. Alan Mann died in 2012, aged 75, but his spirit lives on. Watch this space for some exciting announcements coming soon…