[Gerard]

William Archibald Scott-Brown was a short but sturdy, big-mustachioed young man who must have been one of racing's most courageous drivers. He was born without a right hand, but with a forearm that ended in a notched stump with which he held the wheel while shifting gears, and with a short leg, but you never would have known it to see the cheerful young Englishman driving.

Scott-Brown was born in Paisley, England, May 13, 1927. An only child, he was fortunate in having parents who were deep into the racing world, competing in an Alvis (for which his father was a dealer) at Brooklands and other top circuits. He never favoured motorcycles, so his mother arranged a 10th-birthday gift of a specially built miniature racing car, powered by a 125cc. lawnmower engine. After the usual British schooling, including a still remembered aggressive cricket career, Scott-Brown failed to get his economics degree, due mostly to his own unwillingness to settle down to classroom regimen, and began a casual job hunt.

He eventually took a position in 1949 as salesman for Dobie's Four Square Tobacco in Cambridge, staying 6 years. Meanwhile, he started to dabble with cars, beginning with 3-wheelers like the BSA and the Morgan. Occasionally, his father, who often travelled to South Africa on business, let him use a BMW, and this whetted his appetite for a regular car to replace the BSAs and Morgans. In 1950 the chance came when a grandmother left him enough money to buy an MG TC. From then on, he tinkered with the MG to obtain as much power from it as possible.

The following year, Scott-Brown was ready to try competition. It took him 2 years before he won his initial race in club meetings; then he ran out of funds. But at the opportune moment, Brian Lister was retiring from active racing, to become a sponsor and builder, eventually choosing Scott-Brown as his protege. In later years, Scott-Brown remembered it this way: 'Something in the way I handled the MG appealed to Brian, and so, despite a certain shortage of essential equipment, he asked me to drive for him on an all-expenses paid basis. Ofcourse, I said yes.'

Scott-Brown's rival drivers and Lister's fellow sponsors and builders, all friends of both Brian and Scott-Brown, would kid Lister about the economy of having a single-handed driver. The object of their derision enjoyed the seeming cruel joke as much as anyone. In the winter of 1953, the Lister-MG was born, a 1.5-litre car that proved to be underpowered, despite the ministrations of master mechanic Don Moore. Scott-Brown consistently ran 2nd in it at most club meetings.

Lister's answer to that was the Bristol-engined 2-litre model, debuting at Silverstone in May 1954. It won its class and was 5th overall, with Scott-Brown at the wheel. The car and its driver easily dominated the class for the next 2 years until its engine blew up in one of the last 1955 sports car races. Scott-Brown was ready to advance to bigger things, anyway. Soon thereafter, he quit the tobacco company, opened a garage in Cambridge, and was given a single-seater Connaught Grand Prix car to try at the Brands Hatch Boxing Day meeting in December 1955. An easy victory led, in tuen, to a Lance Macklin offer, which was quickly accepted, to co-drive a factory-engined Austin-Healey in the following March's 12-hour race at Sebring, Scott-Brown's initial visit to the Western Hemisphere.

Unfortunately, at Sebring, the engine acted up and they retired the car from the race. Flying back to England, Scott-Brown entered the Easter meeting at Goodwood in a Connaught, led Stirling Moss and other good drivers for 12 laps, then retired when his engine blew at the beginning of the 13th. Three straight victories in a Connaught at Brands Hatch started 1956 in the proper fashion; one drive setting a lap record, a feat duplicated later in the season at Snetterton. At Silverstone he finished 2nd to Moss in the up-and-coming Vanwall in May of the same year.

For 1957, Lister decided to have a try at the 3.5-litre class and slipped a Jaguar engine into one of his specials. Scott-Brown won the British Empire Trophy with it, then took 8 more races of the 11 in which he started that year. The following season, Scott-Brown spent 6 weels in New Zealand and won the Lady Wigram Trophy. Shortly afterwards, Briggs Cunningham purchased a Lister-Jaguar and hired Scott-Brown to co-drive it with Walter Hansgen at Sebring under his colours. Cunningham's entry was eliminated on the 4th lap of the airport course when Belgium's Olivier Gendebien drove up the Lister-Jaguar's tail with his Ferrari.

The Ferrari's left-front tire came to rest on Scott-Brown's shoulder; later, he displayed a shirt with the Ferrari's tread tracks clearly discernable near the neck opening. When this happened, both cars spun wildly off the track. Gendebien managed to get his car off the Lister-Jaguar, regaining the race after 35 minutes of frantic hammering on its front end in the pits, but Scott-Brown's car was through for the day. Perhaps the near-miss should have served as a warning to Scott-Brown, but he did not take it. He continued driving and competing, until a sports car race May 18, 1958, at Spa, Belgium, site of that year's Grand Prix of Europe.

The 31-year old driver had been around the demanding circuit severa times. Scott-Brown was increasing his speed despite wet conditions, when he reached a spot that some say was the same one at which Dick Seaman crashed back in 1939. On the wet, Scott-Brown spun off the course and into the trees. The car immediately caught fire; he had little chance of getting out.

Those who remember him think of his better days like the one in which he crashed but managed to climb out of the car, bloodstained, with a concussion. First to reach him was a small boy with an autograph album. Archie Scott-Brown had obliged him with a handsome, flourishing signature before quietly passing out.