Three-wheeled heroine

Sue Darbyshire gets back behind the wheel of her Morgan after horror crash 

Eight months after being injured when her three-wheeled Morgan rolled during a race at Mallory Park, one of Britain’s top female historic racers has returned to the track in her rebuilt car.

Sue Darbyshire was thrown from the Morgan last August, when she lost control on oil dropped at the fast plunge through Devils Elbow. The car spun into the gravel and flipped over. “I was knocked about quite a bit, cracked both knees and the car was completely wrecked,” she said. “I had a crack on the head and was bruised and battered. We think I cracked both knees as I was thrown out.” 

The 54-year-old says she was particularly bothered by the fact that her racing leathers were wrecked as the medical crews carefully cut them away to assess her injuries.

Undeterred by the accident, the Warwickshire-based driver says she was determined to return to competition as soon as possible and following a shakedown run at the VSCC Silverstone meeting in April, she went to the Isle
of Man to compete on the three closed-road hillclimbs that make up the Manx Classic.

Racing 90-year-old three-wheelers has never been for the faint of heart but Darbyshire’s return to action has nonetheless provoked admiration from colleagues. She maintains that her biggest fear since the accident has been whether she would have time to get the car back together: damage to the 1929 Morgan Super Aero was extensive and included a bent chassis, a cracked gearbox and an engine damaged by ingesting gravel. 

“It has taken us all winter to fix it. It was a massive job, all the woodwork on the car was wrecked too,” she says. “And I’ve also had to get new racing leathers.”

Darbyshire is renowned as one of Britain’s leading Morgan three-wheeler exponents and was a motorcycle sidecar racer for 20 years before switching to the Morgan.