PastImperfect: The other Moss:Despite not having raced at the top end of motor sport since the 1960s, Stirling Moss remains one of the best-known names in motor racing.
For his younger sister Pat Moss, who carved out a distinguished career for herself as a rally driver, this initially proved a help in getting her works drives, but over time her achievements, unlike those of her more famous brother, have tended to fade from view.
That's hardly fair, for the highly competitive Pat Moss had exceptional driving talent. She began rallying in a side-valve Morris Minor but soon graduated to a TR2, selling her father a half share in a horse so that she could raise the money to buy the car. BMC first took an interest in the young 21-year-old driver in 1955 when it entered her in the RAC rally in an MG TF. This was followed by an assortment of BMC cars: Austin A90, Westminster, MGA, Morris Minor, Healey 100/6, Riley 1.5 and Austin A40, for which she was paid the then princely sum of £1,000 a year.
By the end of the 1950s Pat Moss had graduated to driving the big Austin-Healey 3000, the car with which she will always be associated. She began 1960 as part of the official BMC works team, driving the rather fearsome Healey 3000, winning the Coupé des Dames in the Geneva and Tulip rallies, and second overall on the Alpine before trying the Liege-Rome-Liege rally.
Now the Liege-Rome-Liege rally was - following the demise of the Mille Miglia - in effect the world's greatest road race. With seemingly endless stages and involving two crossings of the Alps, this was the supreme challenge for rally drivers.
The big Healeys were then near the peak of their development and their lumpy 3-litre engine was producing around 150 bhp while the 4.9 final drive ratio - borrowed from a London taxi - could reach 60mph in six seconds: an impressive performance for the time. For no fewer than 90 hours Pat drove the Healey superbly to score an outstanding win, a staggering achievement that ranked her right up there with the best rally drivers in the world.
In later years, Pat drove for Saab and married Eric Carlsson, himself a legend of rallying history.
At the same time as Pat was carving out a name for herself in motor sport, she was show jumping at the highest levels, becoming part of the British Show Jumping team for 15 years. In fact, horses were her first love: "The funny thing is I hated cars, right up to the time I started driving and did a rally, and that was that."