Tragedy at the 1987 Ivory Coast Rally

Tragedy in the Ivory Coast Nov ’87

Our rally correspondent Gerry Phillips mourned the deaths of Toyota team manager Henry Liddon and leading co-driver Nigel Harris in a light aircraft accident on Africa’s ‘other’ WRC round. The Japanese manufacturer had entered two of its Supras, for Björn Waldegärd and Lars-Erik Torph, for the Ivory Coast Rally. But they found themselves in an early tussle “over roads slippery, muddy and waterlogged after months of heavy rain” with the factory Volkswagen Golfs of Kenneth Eriksson and Erwin Weber.

Torph lost time when a fractured brake pipe sent him off the road, but that paled into insignificance against the tragedy that followed, killing all four people on board the Cessna, including the two pilots. “Henry had been in his customary role during the progress of a rally, controlling the team’s operation from the air,” wrote ‘GP’, “whilst Nigel, engaged by Toyota to navigate a daytime spotter plane, had joined the other aircraft for the night in order to see at first hand how the airborne management job was done.

“The aircraft came down about 1.15am in dense tropical forest and exploded immediately. The cause of the crash has not been, and probably never will be, explained.”

Former policeman Phillips had developed a love for Africa through his journalism, which started at Motor Sport in 1965 before he became rallies editor of sister paper Motoring News. So much so that he went on to become involved in the organisation of the Safari Rally.

As such, his Ivory Coast report began with a damnation of governing body “FISA’s impossible demands that the rules of Europe should apply to Africa. Applying them to Africa is idiotic, and the very idea of doing so is itself conclusive evidence that those responsible have no practical knowledge of rallying.”
Eriksson’s maiden WRC win came “not a moment too soon” in the words of Phillips, who admired that “he has deserved such a result all year”. But Phillips, who would be fatally injured in a car crash while attending a friend’s funeral in Kenya (tribute in our January 1997 issue), added that the rally would be “remembered not only for its mediocrity, but as the event which claimed the lives of two fine men, Henry Liddon and Nigel Harris”.

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IN THE SPIRIT OF BOD AND JENKS

On this month… Moss loss, F1 moaners and Williams wags

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