Carlsson was one of the first professionals in what was, when he started to compete in the 1950s, still an overwhelmingly amateur sport. Tall, portly and stooped he was an unlikely sportsman, but he brought a new level of speed and commitment to what had, before then, often been a staid sport built more about regularity sections than stage times. He became one of rally's first big international stars and was credited with possibly inventing, and at least popularising, left-foot braking. He was also famous for some spectacular crashes, earning the nickname in Swedish of Carlsson på taket - 'Carlsson On The Roof - something he played on in the advertising image dug out by
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He won the Monte Carlo Rally three times and took back-to-back victories in the RAC in 1960, 1961 and 1962, but he was almost as well known for one of his 'failures', when blatantly partisan officials in the 1959 Rally Portugal denied him the European championship he should have won - he was docked a total of 50 points for having the wrong colour numbers on his car - it should have been 25 points but they insisted on penalising him separately for each door.
Carlsson finished driving competitively well before the big money entered the sport, a point he liked to make when comparing himself to some of his wealthier successors but then carved out a second career as Saab's principal brand ambassador. Doubly appropriate because he had been born in Saab's home town of Trollhattan. He married Pat Moss, a successful rally driver in her own right (and Stirling Moss's sister) in 1966 and became a pioneer in another way, as the first of the large number of Scandinavian rally drivers to settle in the Thames Valley.
For decades no Saab press launch was complete without his presence, where he made time for anybody who wanted to chat. I know - having been delivered a couple of hours before anybody else to the facelifted 9-5 presentation back in 2005. Carlsson had been rehearsing his speech but put that aside to fill the time talking about his career, his fearless driving technique and even what it was like to have had a Saab 9000 special edition named after him, admitting that he had been asked to sign several of them.
Which brings us to today's video - Carlsson demonstrating the freshly-launched 9000 Carlsson at Donington Park complete with some Scandinavian flickage and a hands-off ABS demonstration in a 900.
RIP, Erik. You were one of the greats.
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