Yorkshire motorsport legends: Anita Taylor

During my research into the racing driver Anita Taylor, I found that she was mostly referred to as Trevor Taylor’s sister.   Trevor was a successful racing driver who drove alongside Jim Clarke at Lotus but he was never referred to as Anita Taylors brother.  

Anita was a successful racer in her own right and was one of those small band of women in 1960’s who raced at the highest level of motorsport.  The garage owning Taylor family were very well connected in motorsport and this brought them many opportunities. 

Anita was born in Sheffield and like many racing drivers she started out in rallying before moving on to circuit racing.  Her first race was in a Ford Anglia at the 1962 Silverstone International, which she failed to finish.  However things improved and she took an important win in the BMRC Trophy driving a Lotus Elan that had been previously raced by Jim Clark.  Later that year she drove in the Brands Hatch six hours with fellow Yorkshire women Anne Hall in another Ford Anglia.  She competed in the British Saloon Car Championship between 1962 and 1967, mostly in the trusty Ford Anglia.  

The BSCC was a very popular series and included drivers like Jim Clark, Jack Sears and Danny Hulme.  In 1964 Anita, with her brother Trevor, formed Aurora racing to tackle the BSCC in Mini Coopers.  The team did not make much of an impact due to the exceptional driving talent that they were competing against.

After two years in the Mini Coopers, Anita and Trevor moved to Broadspeed and were back in Ford Anglia’s once again.   She won the Silverstone International Trophy in the under one litre class.  At the end of the season, she rolled the Anglia in front of the TV camera’s but despite this, Broadspeed took the team championship.

After the 1966 season she married Dave Mathews and went to the Bahamas for her honeymoon.  Co-incidentally it was Nassau Speedweek and she drove a Shelby GT350 in two races for the fledgling  Ring Free oil ladies team.  For 1967 she became a full time member of the Ring Free team along with Smokey Drolet and Janet Guthrie.  They finished 20^th overall in the Daytona 24 hour and in the Sebring 12 hour they were 35^th in an Alpine Renault A110.  Anita continued to be sponsored by Ford during this period as well as driving for Broadspeed in the BSCC. 

Her career was now coming to a close though she continued to take part in rallies and driving stunts for Ford.  However she was becoming increasingly disillusioned by Ford using her as more of a model than a racing driver.  This article announcing her retirement shows what women racing drivers had to put up with and it is a recurring theme in almost every interview and video that I looked at for this piece.  I would like to say that it isn’t like this today but sadly, I don’t think we are quite at the point where we appreciate women drivers for their talent rather than their looks.

In 1967 she retired and settled into family life (though her marriage didn’t last).  She never competed again but remained a motorsport enthusiast and attended many events.