Jon Dooley 1946-2020

It is with an extremely heavy heart that we must announce the very sad passing of Jon Dooley.

 

Jon was a motorsport legend, a BTCC driver, former Editor of our Alfa Romeo Driver magazine and AROC Club Chairman.  He was a gentleman, a kind man, and his contribution to both our Club and every person he met was huge.

 

AROC started at the end of 1964, with a group of Alfisti meeting in London.  Jon and his father picked things up in 1966-7, when Jon became magazine editor.   Membership back then was in the low hundreds, and Alfas were of course an extremely rare sight, and expensive to buy. 

 

Jon started racing Giuliettas in the 1960s, doing regularity rallies and sprints and hillclimbs.  In 1969 he won a ‘Alfas v BMWs’ event in a 1750 GTV. 

 

As well as circuit racing he raced an Alfasud Ti in the RAC Rally in 1974 and ‘75 and the Tourists Trophy in ’75. 

 

He won Production Saloons championship in 1978, and raced hard in a 2L Alfetta against Gerry Marshall’s Dolomite Sprint. 

 

In BTCC, he raced his superb Alfasud in 1980 again, now 6 years old and with 90,000 on the clock, and came 3rd overall in 1981 with it.  In a GTV6 he was class champion in BTCC. 

 

From 1986 to ’87 he raced the 75 Turbo in the ETCC and WTCC.  In 1987 he came 3rd overall and 2nd in class. 

 

During 12 years in BTCC (76 to 87) he had 19 wins and 2 class championships, all of course in Alfas. 

 

We owe Jon a huge debt.  And he contributed to our Club enormously over many decades.  His support and dedication was huge, still actively contributing up to recent days on our Members’ Archive and his superb contributions to our Alfa Romeo Driver magazine.

 

We will miss him enormously.  This really is a sad day for us all. 

 

May he rest in peace.

 

 

 

More information will be released in due course.