We Are Sad To Report The Passing Away Of An Australian Ralliart Legendary Figure, Doug Stewart
It is with great sadness that we advise of the recent passing of former CAMS President Doug Stewart.
While Doug was known for his administration roles at CAMS, including the position of CAMS President between 1969-1971, he will always be renowned for his contributions to rallying.
Doug had three distinctive roles in his association with Trialling/Rallying – competing in post war Trials, the CAMS Administration and then owner, and participant, of the Mitsubishi Ralliart Team.
In 1955, after having just been elected President of the Motoring Club of Australia in his mid-twenties, Doug met car enthusiast Jack Witter and as a result, a love for long distance trialling begun.
They entered a Volkswagen in the 1957 Ampol Round Australia together and won, with Doug’s preparation for the event including lightening the car by cutting handles off their toothbrushes and mailing their clothes on ahead to reduce weight, the key to their success.
Driving the Volkswagen again in 1958, the pair came equal first with Don Garard and Jim Roberts, while in the 1964 Ampol Trial, Doug joined Barry Lloyd to finish fourth, before claiming a top five finish in the 1970 Ampol Trial alongside George Shepheard.
Doug’s motor sport success was as a driver, team owner and manager. He owned the Ralliart franchise in Australia and this involved competing at such events as the Southern Cross International Rally in the seventies and the Wynns/Australia Safari in the late eighties and early nineties.
His team also contested the CAMS Australian Rally Championship throughout the eighties and nineties, before leading successful rally campaigns in Asia Pacific during the same period.
The success achieved by Ralliart in both Australia and Asia paved the way for the forming of Ralliart Europe under Andrew Cowan.
Under Doug’s stewardship, Ralliart won consecutive Southern Cross Rallies between1972 and 1976, consistently beating some of the more fancied overseas crews.
In the Sydney to Darwin Wynn’s Safaris, which is equivalent to the Paris Dakar Rally, Cowan took Mitsubishi to wins in 1985 and 1986, whilst Doug himself won in 1987, before Ross Dunkerton won in 1988.
The wins to Ralliart continued in the Australian Safari as David Officer took out top honours in 1989 and 1991 and Kenjiro Shinozuka in 1990.
Doug brought professionalism to the essentially amateur sport of Rally, and always carried a gentlemanly air about him. In 1972, he was awarded the CAMS Award of Honour, the highest award bestowed by CAMS.
In his everyday job Doug was, at one stage, International Marketing Manager for Travelodge, in charge of over 400 hotels and motels in the USA and Australia.
Our own MD, Peter Collinson, had the great pleasure to work with Ralliart Australia boss, Doug Stewart, during the period of Co-ordSport working With Tusk Engineering to run Kenjiro Shinozuka in the Asian Pacific Rally Championships, driving Mitsubishi Galant VR-4s, in the early ‘90s.
