Ian Walker Racing – A Man and His Cars
By Julian Baume
Ian Walker began his competition career as a rally driver in a Sunbeam Talbot and later drove one of the Ford factory Falcons in the Monte Carlo Rallye before switching to racing with an ex-Graham Hill Lotus XI known as the Yellow Peril, in which he won the Autosport championship in 1957. He was also the first to race a Lotus Elite, taking seven wins the following year, yet his greatest accomplishments came not as a driver but as a team owner.
Ian Walker Racing fielded cars in his yellow-with-green-stripes livery for a list of drivers that included Paul Hawkins, Mike Spence, Peter Ryan, Frank Gardner, Graham Hill, Peter Arundel, Jim Clark, Sir John Whitmore, Jackie Stewart and Trevor Taylor. Most of these racecars were Lotuses as Walker Racing served as the Lotus factory’s unofficial “B” team courtesy of Walker’s long-standing friendship with Colin Chapman. Two of these in particular were his pair of Elan/26Rs known as the Gold Bugs.
All that and much more is chronicled in this 208-page slipcased offering from Coterie Press, illustrated with some 400 images, many from the Walker family archive and never before published.
Priced at US$125/£75—a leather-bound Publisher’s Edition goes for US$395/£250—the book is available from enthusiast bookstores or direct from the publisher at www.coteriepress.com
