Tony Rolt

Tony Rolt, who died on Wednesday aged 89, was among the best-known figures in British motor racing; he was also involved in one of the most celebrated attempts to escape from Colditz Castle.

	Rolt: won 1953 Le Mans 24-Hour Classic

It was Rolt who was the first inmate of Colditz to propose building a glider, although Flight Lieutenant Bill Goldfinch revealed that he had been thinking along the same lines. Some of the PoWs were incredulous, and Rolt - who took on the management of the project - had some difficulty convincing the camp's escape committee that it could succeed.

Goldfinch had found an aircraft construction manual in the prison library which explained how to design a model. Rolt suggested that the construction be done in a section of the top attic eaves. Overnight 12 men built a false wall; the Germans failed to notice that the space had been made smaller.

Some 40 men worked under electric light with handmade tools for almost a year. Rolt also solved the problem of what to do with "The Colditz Cock", as the craft was known, when it was ready. The idea was to knock a hole in an exterior wall wide enough to bring out all the parts, which would then be assembled on the roof. Finally he was one of the two men from whom the passenger would be chosen. In the event the glider was never launched, as the Americans arrived to liberate the camp.

The son of a brigadier, Anthony Peter Roylance Rolt was born at Bordon, Hampshire, on October 18 1918, and brought up at St Asaph in Wales. He was educated at Eton, where he got into trouble for keeping a car, then went to Sandhurst before being commissioned into the Rifle Brigade.

He was already making his mark in motor racing, having made his debut in 1936, when he shared a Triumph Southern Cross with Jack Elliott in the Belgian Spa 24-Hours. He drove there because he had just lost his British driving licence for speeding in Denbigh High Street.

During 1937 he raced an 8-cylinder Triumph Dolomite before acquiring the ERA "Remus" from the Old Etonian Siamese Princes Chula and Birabongse. When still only 19 he took two first and two second places in the Coronation Trophy races at Donington Park; a second at Crystal Palace; and another at Phoenix Park, Dublin. In a minor Brooklands race a bolt dropped from the ERA's exhaust and flames began swirling around Rolt's lap; removing his gloves, he stuffed one across the hole and won the race.

Rolt grasped the need for excellent preparation, engaging the veteran racer Freddie Dixon to develop the car; and in 1939 he immediately won the 200-mile British Empire Trophy race at Donington. He sold a half-share in the ERA to St John ("Jock") Horsfall, since Army commitments limited his own racing.

In May 1940 Rolt arrived at Calais, commanding a scout platoon, just as the Germans were appearing. Rolt - who was later to be awarded an MC for his gallantry at Calais - gave first aid to a wounded soldier while firing his Bren gun to keep the enemy at bay, and later found himself on the other side of a concrete wall to a large party of Germans. On slipping away, he ran into British troops waving white flags and was captured.

Rolt's first attempt to escape was made while he was being marched away. He jumped into a ditch, then headed into a wood, but was soon reapprehended. Incarcerated at Laufen camp, he took part in a tunnel attempt which was discovered; he was then moved to Biberach, where he was in a four-man team that walked out of the prison gates dressed as workmen.

Once outside the escapers had only the clothes they wore, and, thirsty and hungry, were within sight of the Swiss border when they ran into a guard with an Alsatian. Rolt and his companion were locked up in a cell with two Frenchmen before being returned to Laufen and put in solitary confinement.

On being transferred to Posen, Rolt was involved in a plan to throw ladders across a moat, but the ploy was discovered during a practice attempt. He was then sent to Warburg, where an attempt to escape while dressed as a plumber failed when a guard discovered that he spoke no German. He was one of five men masquerading as Swiss civilians who cleared the gates but were arrested by a patrol which had spotted them on a train.

Rolt's next escape attempt was from Eichstatt, where he was in a party dressed as members of a German general's entourage; they got two miles from the camp before being discovered. By then he had more than earned his promotion to Colditz.

On returning home in 1945, Rolt was awarded a Bar to his MC for his escaping exploits.

He now returned to his life in motor racing. On July 14 1945 Rolt and Jock Horsfall shared their old ERA in British motor sport's re-emergence, at Cockfosters. Rolt campaigned the Alfa-Aitken Special, and then the Delage-ERA. He also raced Connaught, HWM, Nash-Healey and Jaguar sports cars and became almost unbeatable in the Walker A-Type Connaught.

Rolt was an ideal endurance race driver, and won the 1953 Le Mans 24-Hour Classic. According to his extrovert co-driver, Duncan Hamilton, on the night before the event the two men drowned their sorrows after being excluded for a practice infringement; to their consternation (given their powerful hangovers) they were reinstated next morning - yet they emerged victorious. This often-repeated fairytale deeply upset Rolt; and Jaguar's formidable team manager, "Lofty" England, insisted: "Of course I would never have let them race under the influence. I had enough trouble when they were sober!"

In 1954 Rolt and Hamilton came within an ace of winning Le Mans again when their latest D-Type Jaguar was narrowly beaten by a factory Ferrari. Rolt and Hamilton also finished second for Jaguar in the 1954 Reims 12-Hours; and at Le Mans the next year they retired when running second. But Rolt and his wife, Lois, had witnessed the Le Mans disaster which claimed more than 80 lives, and thereafter he concentrated on his engineering business.

Just after the war he had established Rolt Dixon Research, with Freddie Dixon, to develop advanced automotive technologies, beginning with the four-wheel drive, four-wheel steering "Crab". They won backing from the tractor magnate Harry Ferguson, forming Harry Ferguson Research in 1950. Dixon left, but Ferguson and Rolt clicked; many advanced safety features, now standard, were developed by the two men during the 1950s.

Rolt's interest in racing led to the development of the Ferguson "Project 99" four-wheel drive racing car in 1960. Harry Ferguson died suddenly that October, and Rolt always regretted that he had not survived to see the P99 race; in 1961 it became not simply the only 4WD car ever to win a Formula 1 race, but also (driven by Stirling Moss) the last front-engined car ever to do so.

Rolt subsequently built Indianapolis 500 track-racing 4WD cars for the American STP Corporation, and Ferguson transmissions appeared in the Lotus, Novi, STP and Shelby Indy cars of 1964 to 1969. With the technical director Claude Hill and the project engineer Derek Gardner, Rolt was among the unsung backroom heroes of British racing development.

Ferguson Developments was closed when - with the Ferguson family's blessing - Rolt founded his own FF Developments company in 1971, converting cars, vans and ambulances to 4WD. FFD became an important partner of Ford, Chrysler, Audi, Fiat/Lancia and General Motors. In 1994 the business was sold to Ricardo.

Tony Rolt shunned publicity. He avoided Colditz reunions, and would say: "Escaping was not a game. Nor was it fun. It was a duty."

His wife Lois and one daughter predeceased him, and he is survived by two sons and another daughter.