At heart of Tommy
and I would be getting up to mischief with your dad.
“Tommy certainly lived life in the fast lane, very much an early pioneer in the motor trade as we know it.”
Tommy’s business career had humble beginnings in his native Kirriemuir.
As an ambitious youngster, he sold firewood door-todoor from an old Dodge lorry.
The son of a clerk of works with the Air Ministry, he went with his family to Egypt in 1948.
There he had his first taste of endurance driving and twice made the trip from Cairo to Benghazi.
The machines he drove were enormous transporters with a top speed of 30mph.
But in an interview with the Perthshire Advertiser in 1971, he recalled that as he sat behind the huge steering wheel, he dreamed of the day he would have his own racing car and would exchange the dusty desert roads for the oilstained racing circuits.
Back home in Scotland, he was called up to do his National Service and served as a driving instructor with the Royal Army Service Corps.
After demob, he returned to Kirriemuir - and his business ambitions were never stronger.
He started to tinker with bicycles and motorbikes and eventually cars - to make ends meet.
Soon he had accumulated enough capital to go into partnership in a scrap metal business, which took him to Perth.
However, his fascination for speed was also apparent and, in his spare time, he took part in several motorcycle races.
Two years later, deciding that the scrap metal business definitely was not for him, he returned to his original love - cars.
He leased a small lockup in Perth’s Nelson Street, planting the seeds of what would become a huge, multi-million pound motor business with wide-ranging interests across Scotland.
He bought and sold and also repaired cars, gradually building up his stock, until he was able to afford a showroom of his own in Viewfield Place, just off the Crieff Road.
Surrounding property was bought up and the rapidly-expanding business soon filled the showroom, workshops and office premises.
Meanwhile, Tommy’s racing career was also showing promise and after he was offered a second-hand Cooper 500, he raced it at Kirkcaldy, coming second in his heat and third in the final.
His next acquisition was a Staride, with a Norton 500 engine. He had a number of notable successes in the Formula Three Class, beating Cliff Allison, who later became Ferrari’s No. 1 driver, on a number of occasions.
As business boomed in Viewfield Place, Tommy started racing Lotus cars and regularly finished in the first three.
The late Jim Clark, during a visit to Tommy’s garage in 1963, as reigning world champion, recalled that he was beaten in his first-ever race in 1956 by Tommy Dickson.
He drove for Lotus at Le Mans in 1958 and later that season he joined Ecurie Ecosse.
Disaster struck, however, as he diced with Innes Ireland for first place at Snetterton Racetrack in Norwich.
His car slewed viciously to the left, hit the bank and in those pre-safety belt days, he was catapulted into the air.
He was taken unconscious to hospital but after a winter fighting to regain fitness, he returned to the racing scene in 1959 - and went on to even greater success.
He had numerous wins at Silverstone, Goodwood and Aintree and raced against many of the country’s top drivers of that era, including Stirling Moss, Ron Flockhart, Innes Ireland and Graham Hill.
He became Scottish Motor Racing Champion in 1959, British Sports Car Champion the following year and top driver with the Ecurie Ecosse team of 1962.
But in August of the same year, after competing for eight years, he decided to call it a day and concentrate on his booming business interests.
He had two garages at that time - in Perth and Forres and had branched out into the hotel trade when he took over the 17-bedroom Huntingtower in June, 1962.
In December, 1966, the PA reported that Tommy had taken over the former Balhousie Works carpet factory of Coates and Co Ltd in Dunkeld Road and the three-acre site was transformed the following year into a major garage complex, Dicksons of Perth.
Further expansion was on the cards and in August, 1985, they unveiled £1.85 million plans to relocate their operations from Dunkeld Road to a new, purposebuilt complex bordering the A9, at the Inveralmond Roundabout.
In July, 1968, Tommy had a miraculous escape from serious injury when he stepped almost unhurt from the tangled wreckage of his two-seater helicopter after it crash landed in the back garden of a house in Perth’s Balhousie Street.
He had been at the controls as he and a Saab representative took off from the side of his garage in Dunkeld Road to refuel at Scone for a business trip to Aberdeen.
But the ‘chopper’ ran into trouble moments later, narrowly missed a primary school, hit the roof of a house and plunged 30 feet to the ground.
Predeceased by his wife Aase, Tommy is survived by his 96-year-old sister Betty, his son, Norman, who followed his father into the garage business and was also a talented racing driver himself, his daughter Pamela, and several grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Due to the current ongoing coronavirus pandemic restrictions, the funeral service was private.