When Dave Brodie succumbed to his long battle with aggressive blood cancer shortly before Christmas at the age of 81, British motor racing lost one its great characters.
Generally known as ‘the Brode’ or simply ‘Brode’, David started racing with his road car – a humble Austin A30 – in 1963, winning his first race, a five-lap handicap on Silverstone’s Club Circuit. A couple of Special Saloon Ford Anglias and a Turner followed, before the influence of his flatmates – Chris Irwin, Richard Attwood, Charles Lucas, Frank and Jonathan Williams among others – persuaded him to acquire for 1968 one of Lucas’s Titan Mk3 1000 cc Formula 3 cars. Although the experienced American Roy Pike was a regular winner in the works Titan, Brodie rarely finished in the top 10 and decided that his future lay in cars with a roof over his head.
