Morecambe Car Club has several well known members. these include Dennis Quinn, John Vipond, Ian Grindrod, Fred Bent and of course Tony Mason.

DENNIS QUINN Dennis is one of Morecambe Car Clubs vice presidents, a position he has received in recognition of his road rallying exploits, he started out in the 70's (but won't say exactly when) driving a Mini on the clubs Tony Mason 12 Car Rally Series, after winning the series he competed in a couple of restrict ed rallies but sustained frontal damage to the Cooper S in a head on crash. He decided to move into the Navigators seat at this point for financial reasons.During this time Dennis navigated for Stuart Lawrenson, Steve Coleman, John Preston and Ian Woof and won the club navigators championship. In 1982 Dennis returned to the Drivers seat in a 1600cc pushrod Talbot Sunbeam. He came second on the Morecambe Rally in 1982 and in 1983 competed in and won the ANCC Road Rally Championship winning events such as the 3 Swans and the Roskirk (by 6 minutes in a borrowed car). After winning the ANCC the 1600cc car was sold and a basically standard Lotus Sunbeam was acquired, the car sported wider arches and the sign writing that was allowed at the time. Whilst campaigning the Lotus Sunbeam Deniis had some work done to the car by Skip Browns, in '84 Skip offered to assist Dennis in his championship battle by looking after the mechanical repairs to the car. During 1984 new rules prevented the use of twin cam multi-valve engines and Skip supplied Dennis with a development single cam head for the Lotus engine. Unfortunately for Dennis one of the other rule changes was to limit the type of tyres to be used on road events. This had a major effect on the handling characteristics of the Sunbeam but appeared to have less of an effect on the Escorts. In 1985 Dennis succumbed to the inevitable and bought the ex-Mike Pattison car he still runs on Welsh Rallies. His first event in the new car was the Illuminations with Mike Kidd who went on to win the Motoring News Championship with Ron Beecroft. Dennis then teamed up with Derek Fryer and started competing on the Motoring News series, during '85 and '86 he spent his time getting on the pace of the front runners. This lead to the last year of the Motoring News, BTRDA Silver Star Road Rally Championship in 1987, Dennis finished second to Ron Beecroft after a year long battle which included a second place on the opening round, the Illuminations, and winning a very foggy Duckhams/Clarion Bath Festival. Unfortunately His season was spoiled on the R. L. Brown, held in the Lake District, when a drunk driver in a Mercedes ran into the back of the Escort, bursting the fuel tank and the whole lot went up in flames. The car was saved and quickly repaired but valuable points were lost. After Targa Timing was banned at the end on 1987 Dennis went on to compete in Wales on the Welsh Road Rally Championship, which he won in '88 with Derek Fryer. After taking a few years off to help Stuart Newby and Ian Holt in the BTRDA stage rally series Dennis returned to competition in the Welsh Lanes in 1991 and duly won the championship in '93 with Alun Cook, He won again in '95 with Nick Darkin, and in '98 with Andrew Thomson, He has won the Welsh Championship with every navigator he has contested the series with and in the middle of 2000 He is leading again.

JOHN VIPOND John started rallying in 1959 with his father in a Mk Zodiac on his local events. He continued into the early 60's with Les Cowan, who he started competing in Wales with. He was also out with Bob Eaves. who he partnered on several european events, Peter Kirk, Bob Lamb, and Frank Davies. In the 70's John could be seen in action with Dave Scaife, Geoff Grundy and Phil Davies. John's European exploits included coming 3rd overall on the 1965 Tulip Rally behind Makinen and Aaltonen. He also took part in numerous international rallies such as the R.A.C, Scottish, Welsh Acropolis, Polish, Boucles-De-Spa and Ypres. In 1968 came the London to Sydney and yet more internationals through out the 70's. In parallel with these events John kept his feet on the ground and competed on many northern rallies and on the Motoring News Championship events. In 1990 the first Classic Illuminations came along and Dave Willan from Tunstall dragged John out of retirement. Since then he has rarely been out of the navigators seat and has competed on more long distance classic rallies than anyone else. His recent rallying history includes numerous Monte Challenges, 3 Classic Marathons, The Classic R.A.C. the 1993 London-Sydney, the 1995 London-Mexico, the 1997 Panama-Alaska and in 1998 the London-Cape Town. In 1996 John was competing on the world championship scene on the Monte Carlo Rally in a Prodrive Impreza. More recently John was the Clerk of the Course on the China-Tibet-Nepal section of the Peking-Paris Rally. Not to be forgotten is that He is also running the 2000 Morecambe Car Club 12 Car Rally Series, aimed at teaching young navigators how to get on in the world of Rallying, if anyone has the knowledge, John certainly has. Now that his son Thomas has shown an interest in rallying John has bought a Mini Cooper and father and son will be competing together on local events .

FRED BENT Club Chairman for numerous years and now the Club president, Fred started rallying in the late 60's, competing on Morecambe Car Clubs Tony Mason 12 Car Rally series. Freds first event was something of a shock as he was navigating a Ford Thames Van, the first section was a run out down the motorway and as such could be timed at 50 miles per hour, far faster than a Thames Van could keep up to. After this introduction Fred decided to stick to navigating cars such as a Triumph TR3a, Daimer Dart and a Morgan 3 Wheeler (with no reverse gear). Freds early rallying career was during the time of Targa Timed road rallies, he had no idea that the watches were screwed to get a result where needed and had a heated debate with one marshal, claiming that the marshals clock was wrong. These early days of road rallying were followed by stage events with such people as Ian Joel and Jeff Hall. One of Freds regular drivers was Peter Edwards who owned Burneside Barn Restraunt. after each event they would dine on good food and fine wines, that lead to him putting on 2 stones during their career together. Peter used to run Ford Escorts of one mark or another, the last one was a very fancy machine with a very highly tuned racing engine which gave no end of trouble. On the Mintex one year the car could not be persuaded to run the night before the rally and the only way Fred could think of getting their entry fee back was to phone up the organisers and say the car had been stolen, The next days headlines in the local papers caused many unwanted messages of sympathy to arrive on his doorstep. During the early 1970's Fred became involved in organising the Illuminations Rally, he took the role of secretary to Stephen Byes' Clerk of the Course. Fred and Stephen ran the event for several years, finally Stephen gave up and Ian Grindrod stepped in for one final year after which it was decided to stop running the Illuminations as a road rally due to the PR problems with running road rallies at that time. Unfortunately this left a vaccuum in the road rally calender which Bolton-le-Moors filled, running the Bolton Midnight on traditional 'Lumies roads at a similar time of year to the 'Lumies. After some time it was decided to keep the Illuminations running and Stuart Lawrenson became Clerk of the Course with Fred still acting as secretary. Fred was also involved in the running of other events including the Navigators Rally and the Lakeland Stages which got its' forestry allocation through the Illuminations originally. Even while he was involved in the running of rallies Fred never gave up competing and took part in many stage rallies with drivers such as Ian Holt, Steve Egglestone, Sid Ormerod and Ian Joel. Fred was a regular at Mull, his best finish was fifth with Steve Egglestone, however he also had his share of bad luck, with Ian Joel they crashed about two and a half miles from Tobermory on the infamous 'Tree Bend', it was a wet and wild night and they thought they were in a fairly safe place so decided to shelter in the car only to have the last car on the road repeat their accident and land on their roof. In 1990 when the fortunes of Morecambe Car Club were low, Fred decided to try to revive the club and with the help of other enthusiasts such as Phil Senior and Ronnie Sandham the Classic Illuminations was born. Fred designed the event to be a test of both man and machine, using the now familiar format of daylight regularity with special tests, a night road rally on Saturday night and the early hours of Sunday morning with more special tests to round things off on the Sunday morning. The event quickly became known as one of the best and most demanding historic events on the calender and still survives in an unchanged form to this day. In the mid 90's Fred became involved in the BBC Top Gear programme, he interviewed Colin McRae in 1994 after the RAC Rally, Colins first win on the RAC. and in 1995 could be seen interviewing Carlos Sainz on the front at Monte Carlo, but two weeks later Fred was back at home, collecting gate money from spectators at Morecambe Car Clubs Bay Stages. In recent years Fred gave up the position of Club Chairman to allow him more time to compete and to allow others to give the club a fresh face. Fred has competed on numerous one day historic events, He has done every one of the modern Targa Rusticanas with Philip Senior, between them they have achieved a couple of class wins. The Classic Malts has become one of Freds favorite events, on the inaugural event He partnered Jayne Wignall and took a gold medal, the following year He was out again with Philip Armstrong but had to retire with halfshaft failure. Last year Fred resumed his succesful parnership with Jayne Wignall to take another gold medal. Fred has often marshalled on the Monte Challenge and has recently started to compete, with Jayne Wignall he has achieved placings as high as eleventh, however when he competed with Jerry Braithwaite they had to retire after going O.T.L. For the last three years Fred has competed on Frank Fennels' Irish Classic with Irish autotest ace Ronnie Griffin, they are confident of a good results this year. Other events Fred is looking forward to include The Circuit of Ireland Retro and LeJog with well known co-driver Neil Wilson who has navigated such stars as Henri Toivenen and Russel Brooks.

TONY MASON Famous Top Gear presenter. Chairman of MCC for several years, Navigated Roger Clark to victory on '72 RAC. Awaiting information from Tony to complete this section.