Description
By: Marcus Chambers . **MERCIAN MANUALS 2008 REPRINT**
It has been my privilege to know Marcus Chambers for over 50 years. I first met him when I scrambled onto the fringes of the BMC rally team and saw at first hand how this calm and intelligent approach contributed so much to the creation of one of the most renowned motorsport teams of all time.
I didn’t find out until many years later that when Marcus decided to move on, he put my name forward as his successor. I will always be grateful to him for that because the years I spent at Abingdon were among the happiest of my life, not least because the team I inherited from him, with outstanding people like Douggie Watts and Bill Price on board, was so supportive and very much the class of the field.
A few years later I was a marshal on the first London to Sydney Marathon (1968) where I saw at first hand how Marcus won that event with the Rootes team. Few people can have had such a long life in motorsport and motoring - he has owned and run some remarkable cars - a 1907 GP Renault, lots of handbuilt specials, Bentleys in the Land’s End Trial and of course Brooklands. And he was the first to take a Mini on an International, finishing the ‘59 Viking Rally in a basically bog standard 850.
With a little bit of luck! is about much more than the motor car because it also covers his earlier life including his wartime adventures and his work with the Overseas Food Corporation. My only question when I heard about the book was over the choice of title because I’m not sure luck played that much part in his story - I think his success was all his own work.
But perhaps one incident described in the book did justify the title - he was in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1917 when a collision in the harbour involving a ship with 3000 tons of explosives on board caused a huge explosion and many deaths. If Marcus and his father had been just six minutes later in finishing their breakfast they would undoubtedly have been killed because the explosion blew in the huge plate glass windows in their house.
Just one of the many absorbing stories in this book. I’ve been lucky enough to see Marcus on a regular basis over the years and to hear many of these stories at first hand. I am delighted that he has now put them on paper so that they can be enjoyed by many more people via this fascinating book.
Stuart Turner
