Ove Andersson died in a car accident while competing in the South African Continental Milligan classic car regularity rally on June 11th.
Whilst best known for his association with Toyota, Ove drove an Alpine A110 in the early 70's.
Ove Andersson, 1938-2008
By David Evans Wednesday, June 11th 2008, 12:10 GMT
Ove Andersson
Unsurprisingly for a Swede interested in rallying, Ove Andersson's first serious rallying was done in a Saab - his first overseas event being the 1964 Acropolis.
By the late sixties, however, Andersson had gravitated towards teams such as Ford and Lancia, where there was money on offer for selected drivers.
Andersson was probably best known for his efforts with Toyota Team Europe, an operation he co-founded to run out of Cologne. His first contact with the Japanese firm had come in 1972, when he was offered a Celica for the RAC.
Further outings in the Toyota dried up, but he retained strong links with Japan and after much persuading and cajoling from the Swede, TTE was established a year later.
The Corolla T20 and subsequent 16-valve T27 were the cars which established the team, with Hannu Mikkola's 1975 1,000 Lakes win a particular high.
A move - against Andersson's advice – from the Corolla to the Celica slowed the pace of success at TTE in the coming years. Despite the development of TTE, Andersson was still driving for other teams at the time – and this was the year he won his only Safari in a Peugeot 504.
By 1980, Andersson accepted that running the team and driving one of the cars was no longer practical, so he threw his weight behind turning TTE into a world-class team.
The arrival of Group B brought with it four-wheel-drive and turbocharging. Toyota took up the latter with the Celica TCT, but limiting drive to the rear wheels ensured the car would never seriously threaten the established order in Europe.
Andersson and TTE came into their own when the Celica GT4 came on line. From Juha Kankkunen's 1989 Rally Australia win, this car kept on winning. Twelve more outright rally wins followed, as did the 1990 drivers' title for Carlos Sainz.
Andersson's good car got even better in the next incarnation: the Celica Turbo 4WD. This car carried three drivers (Sainz, Kankkunen and Didier Auriol) to successive drivers' titles from 1992-1994.
Another enormous source of pride for Andersson were the two manufacturers' titles he collected for Toyota in 1993/94. He would repeat that feat in 1999, when, after a return to the Corolla (this time in World Rally Car spec), Andersson bagged another makes' title before Toyota went racing.
Having talked so much about Andersson's relationship with Toyota, it seems strange to have listened to him talking about his favourite rally car. This didn't hail from the orient. Far from it.
Ove Andersson in the 1971 Monte Carlo rallyIt came from France: the Renault Alpine. If ever there was a man not really made for a car (Andersson and the Alpine is right up there with Markku Alen and the Lancia Stratos), but when Renault was an RAC win away from the 1970 International Makes' Championship (the forerunner to the WRC manufacturers' award), "the Regie" knocked on Andersson's door.
It didn't quite go to plan, but he was offered another chance on the following year's Monte Carlo – an event he won.
Andersson was an enormously engaging rally man. He would, no doubt, have been interested in the debate surrounding the recent Acropolis Rally – reckoned by many to be too rough and too tough.
Andersson would have listened, smiled and pointed to the time he won the 1972 Acropolis in an Alpine: it started on Thursday morning, finished at midnight on Saturday and the longest rest he had was 24 minutes in Thessaloniki.
Andersson had done it all, leaving his drivers with nowhere to go when it came to contract negotiation or off-road explanation.
After his stint in rallying, Andersson shifted his efforts to the Formula One operation, which made its grand prix racing debut in the 2002 season.
Soon after that, the Swede retired from his role as team principal and worked as a consultant for the Japanese squad.
