Russell Brookes (16 August 1945 – 30 October 2019) was a British rally driver. He won the British Rally Championship with a Ford Escort RS1800 in 1977 and with an Opel Manta 400 in 1985. In 1978, he won the Rally New Zealand, a round of the FIA Cup for Drivers, the predecessor to the World Championship for Drivers. In the World Rally Championship, he finished on the podium of his home event, the RAC Rally, three times in a row from 1977 to 1979. Latterly he drove a Ford Sapphire Cosworth 4×4 giving Ford their first international win with the new four-wheel drive car. Here he stayed until the end of 1991 when he retired from competitive rallying. Until shortly before his death, he was still making sporadic appearances in various cars on historic rallies and at motorsports events. In September 2008, Brookes took part in the Colin McRae Forest Stages Rally, a round of the Scottish Rally Championship centered in Perth in Scotland. He competed in the event in a historic Ford Escort RS1600. He was one of several ex-world and British champions to take part in the event in memory of McRae, who died in 2007. We celebrate this remarkable rallye driver with a scale model of his infamous historic Ford Escort RS1600…