Scottish Rally 1976 - Time For Tea?
What better time to celebrate the very best of Scottish motorsport?
With the dust settling over the Scottish referendum, PistonHeads plans to stay as scrupulously neutral as we have throughout the campaign. After all, you probably don't come here for political analysis.
But we thought this was the perfect opportunity to celebrate one of the best things about Scotland - its motorsport. This is a 37-minute film about the 1976 Scottish Rally, a particularly good year for an event that used to be second only to the RAC in terms of duration and toughness.
The film has pretty much got it all: the sweet, sweet music of BDA engines in the glens and forests, the eye-opening sight of mid-70s spectator fashions and music recorded with heavy use of the wah-wah pedal.
But this was also the rally where the Ford works team replaced a differential in Ari Vatanen's Mk2 Escort with one they borrowed from a spectator's car. The action starts at around the 17:10 mark, with the RS1800's predicament serious enough that the youthful Vatanen is asking for his tickets back to Finland. Then co-driver Peter Bryant takes matters into his own hands by flagging down a passing 3.0-litre Capri and persuading the owner to let them borrow his rear diff.
Ken Brown from Nottingham - we salute you. And hope you got paid.
Sadly Ari retired before the end of the event (although he did still take the British Championship that year), with the victory taken by the great Russell Brookes driving an Escort that had pretty much been smashed into a cabriolet.
A brilliant era, a brilliant event - and a brilliant country.
[Apologies for the rather shoddy screengrab, you'll see it's not the most high quality video]
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