One of the special characters of the world championship scene in the seventies was Mick Jones, senior mechanic at the Ford Competition Department at Boreham in Britain, who died at the weekend. Â
Mick Jones (in beanie) servicing for the factory Ford team in the 1970s. (Photos: Martin Holmes)
Mick bridged the gap from the original days of Ford’s rallying in the very early ’60s. His first foreign event was the 1963 Swedish, when Pat Moss drove a Mark 1 Lotus Cortina. He was in charge of all the service work! Â
In those days team mechanics were responsible for all the work behind the scenes. Â
Mick was well remembered for the days of Roger Clark and the famous WRC programme in 1979, when Ford won the world manufacturers’ title and Bjorn Waldegard was drivers’ champion. Â
The sixties and seventies were different days, when the international rally scene was full of special adventure. Â
He was invited (Rally of Portugal 1979) to contest an after event slalom competition in a team’s service transit van. Mechanics had to be skilled at map reading, providing food for crews and using every initiative necessary to achieve the aim of success for his team. Â
On one occasion, Mick persuaded a private Capri owner to donate the immediate use of an axle that was needed to be fitted to Ari Vatanen’s Escort. Â
The hours after a successful event were spent jumping, alone or with innocent bystanders, into hotel swimming pools fully clothed. Â
Mick was best known for his boundless energy and his non-stop vocal commentaries on what he was doing. He was a remarkable example of contemporary self-taught specialists in the sport. Â
One of his favourite stories was the spare weekend in 1967 spent building up the first prototype Escort Twin Cam, a model which went on to be a remarkable success for Ford. Â
When Ford’s world championship programme ended, Mick went to work with Ford at Port Elizabeth in South Africa, where the Escort RS1700T cars were brought into active competition life. Â
Mick lived through interesting days.
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- Martin Holmes
Mick Jones and Hannu Mikkola at the Rally of New Zealand in 1979.