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Sir Stirling Moss RIP


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Very sad news has brought a tear to my eyes. A wonderful person & a true gentleman, a superb all round racer.

R.I.P Sir  Sterling , the memories will live on.

 

                                                        Harvey S. Maitland 

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The greatest driver never to be world champion.

for me the greatest driver ever, such a natural, he was driving when it was a Grand Prix one weekend and the Mille Milia the next.

Legend is a word used far to often these days but he was one.

Sorry to hear of his passing at 90, a special man.

john.

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Sad news indeed. He was a true sportsman and one of the greatest and most versatile drivers ever. 

He was a lifelong champion of motor sport and all things motoring even though he was never world champion and to my mind he was better than world champion.

Brian

 

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RIP Sir Stirling Moss,

Memories of grainy black and white TV (12" screen) showing battles with Graham Hill or other drivers of the time with Stirling more often than not coming out top, but always...always with a true sense of style and fair play. An absolute legend.

Mick Richards 

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Sad news to wake up to this morning. For me the event that stands out will always be the 1955 Mille Miglia.

This race was won by Mercedes-Benz factory driver Stirling Moss with the aid of his navigator Denis Jenkinson. They completed the 992-mile distance in 10 hours, 7 minutes and 48 seconds- an average speed of 99 mph (160 km/h). The two Englishmen finished 32 minutes in front of their second-placed teammate, Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio.

How do you drive at speeds often above 1000mph on those narrow Italian roads for 10 hours ?

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Sad news, indeed. A genuinely remarkable man.  John, I think we can remove the Question mark after your first sentence. 

Not only were his racing exploits amazing, he was also one of only three people to have ever been awarded a coupe d'or on the Alpine Rally for running entirely penalty free three years in a row. 

Surely the ultimate racing driver.

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A sad day

An ace racing driver and real gent, both on and off the track

The world will be a poorer place

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Extremely sad news. A great driver in a very dangerous era. Whilst always associated with Formula 1 he was very successful in so many other disciplines, particularly sports cars, but also in saloons and rallying.

He was very Nationalistic, wanting wherever possible to drive English cars, sometimes to the detriment of his career when better Continental cars were available.

His victory in the 1955 Mille Miglia was the stuff of legend. With co pilot Denis Jenkinson, the celebrated Motor Sport magazine Continental Correspondent, alongside him to issue primitive signals about what was ahead they annihilated the opposition. The Motor Sport magazine report of the race written by DSJ is a brilliant piece of journalism and well worth reading again.

Stirling was a great self publicist and probably one of the first sportsmen to realise the commercial opportunities in his career. Guided by his manager Ken Gregory, he had a lucrative career.

A nice anniversary in his career was him racing at the first Goodwood Revival in 1998, exactly 50 years after his first race victory in a 500 cc Formula 3 car in the very first meeting at Goodwood in 1948.

For those perhaps intending to cash in by selling something that they have with his autograph on it, think again. From my observations he would sign anything, for anybody, at any time, so it has no rarity value at all.

God Rest Stirling. You will be missed.

2 hours ago, foster461 said:

Sad news to wake up to this morning. For me the event that stands out will always be the 1955 Mille Miglia.

This race was won by Mercedes-Benz factory driver Stirling Moss with the aid of his navigator Denis Jenkinson. They completed the 992-mile distance in 10 hours, 7 minutes and 48 seconds- an average speed of 99 mph (160 km/h). The two Englishmen finished 32 minutes in front of their second-placed teammate, Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio.

How do you drive at speeds often above 1000mph on those narrow Italian roads for 10 hours ?

Wow, 1000 mph, now that was fast!!

Dave McD

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Like every one else, I was sorry to hear of the death of Sir Stirling Moss, though I'm afraid that some of us had been expecting this sad news for some time.

 

  Over the years I managed to interview him several times for magazine pieces, or even live, on commentary, at major shows. He was always totally professional, totally involved, and totally prepared. As far as the commentaries were concerned, if he was expected at - say - 3.00PM,  Lady Susan would often appear five minutes early, tell me that he would be there in five minutes - and he always was. Before we started, he would want to know how long we were to talk, and he wanted to be reminded about the agreed topic. If it was an arcane subject (I remember talking to him about the vagaries of the Aston Martin DBR1 gearbox, which was apparently awful...) he would first of all freeze, look into the far distance, sigh just once, then say : 'Right. let's go ....' - and he was always perfect.

 

  A true master at everything he did, a peerless driver, of course, and (to quote Tina Turner) : 'Simply the Best'.  

 

GRAHAM ROBSON

Edited by Graham Robson
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I was fortunate to meet Sir Stirling on more than one occasion when racing at the Le mans Classic or at Goodwood.   However, in 2014 and after a good lunch plus a few glasses of wine at the RAC club I was emboldened to approach him afterwards to ask  him that  after a fantastic career in motorsport how would he like to crown it off by racing my TR at that years classic Le Mans?  "FECK OFF!"  was the rather short but perfectly succinct reply.   Well he was never a man to embroider a sentence and so I did the only thing one could do. i fecked off and later went to ask Johnny Herbert (who was also at the same lunch) if he would drive it.  He just said  "Sorry but  he didn't drive anymore."   A more polite answer maybe but it did lack that 'Stirling touch'. 

A great man who did so much more for the sport than any of the current crop of F1 drivers 

hoges. 

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Dave Mc Donald wrote earlier,

“For those perhaps intending to cash in by selling something that they have with his autograph on it, think again. From my observations he would sign anything, for anybody, at any time, so it has no rarity value at all”.

I handbuilt myself quite a collection of Stirling Moss models over the years and bothered Sir Stirling, through his P.A. Ms. Shepherd, on many occasion asking for signed plaques and always received them without hesitation. I had already built a model of his personal XK120 for myself and thought that when I found another very rare kit of The 120 coupé,  I would offer to build one for him as a thank you. I gave him 3 options of XK120s that I thought he might like and he chose his personal car as I expected he would.

I enquired if I could bring it to the Revival to present it to him and was surprised to receive an email inviting me to bring it to his home. Unfortunately at that time that was not feasible so we arranged to meet at the Revival. However, come the day, there was such a scrum around him and a book stall owner who had arranged for him to do a book signing got so irate at my presence that I passed it to one of his minders. Fearing that it might be damaged before he got to see it I confess that I felt a little deflated. I need not have worried though because a few days later I received a nice personal thank you and this lovely photo.

So Dave, you are right, there is no rarity in his signature but there is great value to me with this one . A gentleman in the true sense of the word! What a life he had.  There is little doubt that the world of living motor racing legends of Sir Stirling’s Caliber is depleting rapidly, but that I’m afraid is to be expected given Anno Domini.

Rodders.

 

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Edited by modelbuilder
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