Tom Trana

Tom Trana on a Volvo PV544 at the 1963 1000 Lakes Rally

Tom Trana (born November 29, 1937 in Kristinehamn , Sweden ; † May 17, 1991 ) was a Swedish car athlete and world-famous rally driver .

Tom Trana (from Sweden's province of Värmland ), who became famous in car racing, was the perfect counterpart to Saab legend Erik Carlsson "På Taket" ("Carlsson on the roof") as a factory rally driver for Volvo in the 1960s . However, Trana had to drive the rear-wheel drive Volvo a little more courageously through the special tests at that time than Carlsson had to drive his various front-wheel drive Saab models.

Originally, Tom Trana was a Volvo mechanic who, with his strong driving performance on a Volvo (P1800) and a car from the British brand BMC, also brought up the works team and its leader Gunnar Andersson (a two-time European rally champion) by 1962 at the latest had drawn attention. For 1963 he received a contract as a works driver from Volvo and won the RAC rally of Great Britain that same season . A year later he repeated this overall victory. After further victories at the Rally Greece 1964 and his "home game", the Rally Sweden 1965, Tom Trana finally belonged to the premier league of this motorsport discipline, which the scene itself affectionately called "the wild riders" at the time.

Soon afterwards, however, the Swede had a serious accident with another road user during a transport stage of the Gulf Rally in England , in which his co-driver Gunnar Thermaenius was killed. Trana was later acquitted of all guilt in the case relating to this collision. Nevertheless - afterwards Tom changed from an impetuous daredevil to a rather thoughtful racing driver , who could still be very fast, but never again built on the really great successes he had achieved with a lot of carelessness. When Volvo lost two of its mechanics in another accident that resulted in death in the Acropolis Rally in 1966, the Swedish automobile plant withdrew its works team from motorsport for more than ten years, but continued to support some so-called private drivers very generously . Tom Trana switched to Saab in 1967, however, and was still relatively successful for the former competition until he finally ended his rally career in 1971 .

Volvo itself only became officially active again at the end of the 1970s and participated with the Volvo R-Team (the R stood for rallycross, rallying and racing) in the FIA European Rallycross Championships from 1978 to 1980. Per-Inge Walfridsson , the legitimate Tom Trana's successor as representative of the Swedish car manufacturer, succeeded in 1980 with a Volvo 343 Turbo against the Norwegian Martin Schanche ( Ford Escort RS 1800 ) and won the European Rallycross title.