News reached us last week of the sad passing of Tony Fowkes, one of the legends of British rallying and also a good friend and a much-loved former member of the core Three Castles team.

I first met Tony in the early 70s, more than fifty years ago. My driver and I had decided to tackle the Escort Mexico series in 1973. A car was needed, so I took on organising the preparation. Tony, who had just shocked the establishment by finishing third on the Welsh as a privateer, was at the top of our shortlist.

Aside from being an ace behind the wheel in his own Escort, Tony co-owned a small garage in Stonebridge Park and, as we met, was moving to a new set-up of his own in Park Royal. Even at the first meeting, his enthusiasm was infectious. He didn’t know us from Adam, but that didn’t matter. He always took people as he found them, one of his many talents.

The car he and his small team built survived the various mishaps we inflicted upon it in the year that followed, while we became regular visitors to Tony Fowkes Automobiles. As the seventies went on, he became a highly valued works driver in the Mercedes long-distance rally team, but he was always there for us too, and when I went hillclimbing in 1980, Tony painted the car. A lasting friendship grew, and has continued with his sons, Andy and Roger, who eventually took over the business.

Years passed (during which I did little or no motor sport), but when I became involved in planning the Classic Malts in 1998, a sequence of unlikely events led to a spare Mercedes becoming available to enter the 1999 event. There was only one ex-works Mercedes driver who was going to get that call, and Tony became the driver on the 1999 event, with me navigating. He had an explosively effective driving style; he was either on or off the throttle – there was no middle ground. We spent most of the event going sideways and laughing.

The car became mine, badly in need of a respray. I recall sitting together in his workshop with pots of Nitromors, stripping the old paint off using brushes. It still carries the immaculate midnight blue Tony put on to this day, and when body parts have been renewed, that work has been done almost entirely by Roger and Andy.

In 2000, I joined Tony and Andy Inskip in their recovery vehicle on Philip Young’s Monte Challenge. I saw Tony’s bravery and resourcefulness at first hand as we winched him down a vertiginous Alpine col to rescue a crew member after they had gone off in their MGB. He then went back to attach the car to our winch. By contrast, all I had to do was reverse the Disco to pull the car to safety and ply the crew with coffee and space blankets. Tony never held back; he was always the first to get stuck in.

Talking of which, among many more demonstrations of such derring-do, he was the moral victor of the 1977 London-Sydney marathon, climbed Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn and Kilimanjaro, did five Paris-Dakar runs on motorbikes, and was in every way a Boy’s Own hero of the time. In all those exploits, he will have made friends around the world.

What does any of this have to do with Three Castles? When Wendy and I started Three Castles in 2002, there was only one crew we wanted to run our backup team. We recruited Tony and his ex-Camel Trophy Discovery, and he came out on this and all the other Three Castles events in our first dozen years, first with Andy, then with Dave Sherwood. My picture shows Tony as we all remember him, smiling, at the first Three Castles of all, in June 2003. RIP, old friend. And thank you for some wonderful memories. We send our condolences to Tony’s widow, Angela, and to Andy, Roger and the rest of his family.

Ian Crammond

Updated 27.11.25. Tony's funeral will be held on Tuesday, 9th Dec at 2.00pm, at Breakspear Crematorium, Ruislip, Middlesex, HA4 7SJ.

Those wishing to attend are asked to please let Tony's son, Andy, know by emailing Andy@TonyFowkes.co.uk. There will be a reception after the funeral, venue tbc once numbers are known. 

Picture: Mike Johnson