A racing car driven in the 50s by the legendary Scot known as “Britain’s fastest lady” has fetched £18,000 at auction.
The 1957 Turner 803 was raced by Betty Haig – the country’s most successful female racing driver – for three years at locations including Goodwood and across Europe. Restored in the 90s, it was later exported to the US before returning to the UK in 2004 and is said to still have the potential to race.
The 948cc-engined car went under the hammer at Silverstone Auctions in Birmingham, where it was bought by a private UK collector bidding on the phone.
Howard Hill-Lines, of Silverstone Auctions, said: “Betty Haig was a great character and highly successful with wins including the Monte Carlo Rally and Le Mans as well as the gold medal from the 1936 Olympic Games.
“There was international interest in this charismatic little racing car.”
Haig, born in 1905, was grand-niece of Field Marshal Douglas Haig and a member of the Scotch whisky-distilling Haig family. She bought her first car, a 1922 ABC roadster, at 16 with a gift of £50 from a great aunt.
She spent her earliest years at the family’s Ramornie estate in Fife before moving to West Sussex in her teens. Haig died in 1987 and is memorialised in the Triple-M Register’s Betty Haig Cup for best racing performance of the year.
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