1 ANDY ROUSE
CHAMPION: 1975, 1983, 1984, 1985
Andy Rouse has won more British Touring Car Championship titles than anyone else, but his legacy in the racing runs far deeper.
The quietly-spoken former single-seater hopeful was an expert engineer too, and once he turned his attentions to Ford’s monstrous Sierra RS Cosworth and later the RS500, an iconic motorsport marriage was blessed. But that was towards the end of a long career in the category.
The very first season of the BSCC in 1958 had resulted in a tie between two cars, but Rouse’s opening title came when things were even closer. Three competitors were level on points after the 11 rounds. Stuart Graham (Chevrolet Camaro), Win Percy (Toyota Celica) and Rouse (Triumph Dolomite Sprint) all finished on 75 points. However, Rouse’s greater number of class wins gifted him the crown.
In 1980, Rouse’s former employer Broadspeed closed down and he bought the hardware to create Andy Rouse Engineering. There were further titles in the 1980s in an Alfa Romeo GTV6 and a Rover SD1, but the real hit came when he switched to Ford. “We had talked to Ford quite a lot when I was running a Capri. We knew the Cosworth was coming, and they got in touch with us,” he says.
Rouse initially used a Ford Sierra XR4TI in 1985: “It used a lot of the same suspension parts and had the same chassis as the Cosworth that was to come and it was also turbocharged, so we gained some knowledge there. The RS Cosworth came along in 1987. It was just a great car.”
Rouse build a number of cars for customers and it became the only weapon to use – however, those pesky lower class cars could easily steal in a nick the overall honours. There were two Class A wins for Rouse, whose battles with the likes of Tim Harvey, Steve Soper and Robb Gravett had the TV viewers enthralled,.
Rouse moved on to the Super Touring era and was instrumental in the championship’s two-litre revolution. He ran Toyota’s campaign for a couple of seasons before returning to the Blue Oval’s programme through until the end of 1995, by which stage he had stepped down as a driver.