MARK & DAVID HIGGINS: ‘NO TEAM MANAGER WAS BRAVE ENOUGH TO PUT US BOTH IN THE SAME TEAM’

“Is this a quiz? What’s our prize if we win?” quips Mark Higgins, less than a minute into our phone call.

The competitive edge that yielded him three British Rally titles hasn’t faded.

But it’s not just Motorsport News he’s addressing; brother David is here too.

David, on paper at least, is the more successful of the brothers with 10 US titles and one British crown on his CV. But when they were both competing in the BRC, it was Mark who more often than not was enjoying the larger spotlight in the top classes.

But who’s the better driver? Why is David congratulated every time he goes toAmerica and why did crashing a Vauxhall Nova land Mark his first big break?All that and more are revealed as the Motorsport News’s readers put the Higgins brothers to the test.

Question: “You’ve driven many cars throughout your career but which is“That’s difficult. There’s favourite cars for different rallies. The F2 cars on Tarmac were fantastic and the [Nissan] Sunny was a great car, and any World Rally car on a proper sort of stage is fantastic as well. All the World Rally cars have got a similar feel, any of those are good.And then probably my favourite car of all to drive was the TT car [Subaru Impreza]. So everything really [laughs].” “My favourite would definitely be the last Subaru [I drove] inAmerica because it was the ultimate rally car where the regulations were free, loads of power, good handling and everything so that was pretty good.And probably the two cars I would love to drive: I’ve never done a rally in a proper Group 4 Escort so I would need to do that at some point, but the other one would be the old Toyota Celica ST185 because that was the top car at the time when I was getting into rallying with [Juha] Kankkunen, [Carlos] Sainz and those guys. That would be something I would really like to have a go in.” Are there any of each other’s cars you’d have liked to have competed in? “I would like to have competed in one of David’s last Subarus, they were pretty awesome. We had one of his old cars in China for a bit which was nice but his latest cars looked mega to be honest.”