Peter "Possum" Raymond George Bourne (13 April 1956 – 30 April 2003) was a champion New Zealand
rally car driver. He died under non-competitive circumstances while driving on a public road that was to be the track for an upcoming race.
Awards
He was a three-time winner of the
Asia-Pacific Rally Championship
The Asia-Pacific Rally Championship (APRC) is an international rally championship organized by the FIA encompassing rounds in Asia and Oceania. Group N cars dominated the championship for many years but in recent years cars built to R5 and S ...
and the
Australian Rally Championship
The Australia Rally Championship (ARC) is Australia's leading road motor rally competition. A multi-event national championship has been held each year since 1968.
Competition - to 2010
The Australia Rally Championship takes in some of the c ...
seven times consecutively, amongst many other titles.
In 1993 he became the first New Zealand resident to have a works contract in a
FISA rally championship, when he drove a
Subaru Legacy
The is a mid-size car built by Japanese automobile manufacturer Subaru since 1989. The maker's flagship car, it is unique in its class for offering all-wheel drive as a standard feature, and Subaru's traditional boxer engine. The Legacy was sol ...
for
Prodrive
Prodrive is a British motorsport and advanced engineering group based in Banbury, Oxfordshire, England. It designs, constructs and races cars for companies and teams such as Aston Martin, Bahrain Raid Xtreme and Team X44. Its advanced technolo ...
.
Family
Bourne lived in
Pukekohe,
Auckland
Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The most populous urban area in the country and the fifth largest city in Oceania, Auckland has an urban population of about I ...
, near his workshop. He lived with his wife, Peggy Bourne, and three children, Taylor, Spencer, and Jazlin. Bourne earned his nickname, "Possum", on the night he crashed his mother's
Humber 80 while trying to avoid a
possum in the middle of the road.
His autobiography, ''Bourne to Rally'', was completed just days before his death. A bronze memorial statue of Bourne, unveiled a year after his death, stood overlooking the place of his death.
The statue was moved to Pukekohe town square in April 2013, unveiled alongside the 2013 ITM 400 V8 Championship parade. In 2005, Peggy Bourne entered
Race to the Sky, despite having had no formal rally driving experience, as a tribute to her late husband. In 2013, his oldest son Taylor Bourne competed in the 2013 Possum Bourne Memorial Rally with his stepfather and MP
Mark Mitchell as co-driver. When Taylor completed the event, he went on to say "It's easy to understand why he loved it so much".
Car of choice
Bourne was best known for his exploits behind the wheel of
Subaru
( or ; ) is the automobile manufacturing division of Japanese transportation conglomerate Subaru Corporation (formerly known as Fuji Heavy Industries), the twenty-first largest automaker by production worldwide in 2017.
Subaru cars are ...
cars, initially the
RX (the turbocharged version of the Leone), then the
Legacy
In law, a legacy is something held and transferred to someone as their inheritance, as by will and testament. Personal effects, family property, marriage property or collective property gained by will of real property.
Legacy or legacies may refer ...
(rebadged as the Liberty for the Australian market because of a perceived clash with charity organisation
Legacy Australia).
But it would be the
Impreza WRX that he would become most associated with, driving for the
Subaru World Rally Team in
Rally New Zealand,
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...
and also in
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Gui ...
, partnered by
Richard Burns in the mid 1990s, before going on to win multiple Australian titles with Subaru Rally Team Australia.
Subaru Japan gave him a black, limited edition Subaru
Impreza WRX STi
The is a compact car that has been manufactured by the Japanese automaker Subaru since 1992. It was introduced as a replacement for the Leone, with the predecessor's EA series engines replaced by the new EJ series. It is now in its sixth gene ...
for personal use.
Death of Rodger Freeth
Bourne's best friend and co-driver,
Dr. Rodger "Roj" Freeth, died in a horrible accident during 1993
Rally Australia, and the crash almost ended Bourne's career. After encouragement from the Freeth family, he returned to the driver's seat. After Freeth's death, Bourne displayed a "ROJ" license plate on the front of his rally cars.
Death
Bourne received serious head injuries in a non-competitive car crash on 18 April 2003, and died in
Dunedin Public Hospital
Dunedin Hospital is the main public hospital in Dunedin, New Zealand. It serves as the major base hospital for the Otago and Southland regions with a potential catchment radius of roughly 300 kilometres, and a population of around 300,000.
Oper ...
on 30 April 2003 after life support was withdrawn.
He was driving the
Race to the Sky track, on the Waiorau Snow Farm Road which is normally a public road, for the event held in
Cardrona, near
Wānaka, New Zealand.
[ Driving his Subaru Forester, he collided head on with a Jeep Cherokee driven by rally driver Mike Barltrop who claimed that Bourne was speeding. This treacherous road has over 100 corners and at least 15 hairpins, hence its appeal for rally driving. Barltrop was later arrested on a dangerous driving charge.] After pleading guilty to aggravated careless use causing death, Barltrop was sentenced in the Invercargill District Court to 300 hours' community work, disqualified from driving for 18 months, and ordered to pay $10,000 reparations, divided between the intensive care unit of Dunedin Public Hospital and the Possum Bourne Education Trust.[
At the time of his death, Bourne had just re-entered the world stage, driving a production-class Subaru Impreza in the ]PWRC
The FIA Production World Rally Championship, or PWRC, was a companion rally series to the World Rally Championship, contested by Group N rally cars.
History
The series started in 1987 as ''FIA Cup for Production Rally Drivers'' and obtained the ...
.
Career results
References
External links
Obituary – from The Age
Possum Bourne Motorsport
News story about who was to blame
Interview with Barltrop
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bourne, Possum
1956 births
2003 deaths
New Zealand rally drivers
World Rally Championship drivers
Road incident deaths in New Zealand
Sportspeople from Auckland