7 May 2026 / By David Ferguson
There are many weird and wonderful ways to secure a life partner, but the role of motorsport can often be underplayed.
Take Ben MacDowall, the 2024 Scottish Tarmack Rally Champion, for example. He grew up loving cars, his grandfather having been an F1 marshal among other things, but he struggled to find a way into motorsport himself until he met a girl.
For that girl, Alison Horne, however, it was quite an easy path, the Inverness lass being born into a rallying family where dad Andy Horne was an avid competitor and continues to be now into his mid 60s, and sister Karen and brother Adam followed suit. Becoming a navigator at 16, and then persuading friends and family to let her loose behind the wheel, has opened up to Alison a wonderful past decade or so of competition across the country.
So, if there was a motorsport version of Tinder then you could imagine Ben and Alison swiping right and hey presto, a match! But there isn’t (is there?) so it was actually the romantic location of Bo’ness Car Show that brought this pair together, their eyes meeting over the polished bonnets, and the rest has become their own fascinating piece of motorsport history.
Match made in heaven or happy coincidence?
Ben was toiling away in the Land Rover business ‘Engine 710’ he has built up in South Queensferry – and is well advertised across the duo’s cars (pictured) – with now 12 employees when we caught up this week, with Alison not far away poring over the paperwork that keeps the business in check.
“Yeah, I guess it was a match made in motorsport heaven!” says Ben, loudly enough for Alison to hear in the next door office.
Asked if there was a chance that her ideal man might not have been involved in motorsport, Alison thinks for a moment.
“I’d like to say it was just happy coincidence,” she says. “But it is such a big part of our family’s life that I think I’d have struggled with someone who kept turning up asking what a rally car was or didn’t know a spanner from a wrench! Yeah, that wouldn’t work out.”
How people get involved and pursue dreams in motorsport is the stuff of ‘amazing content’ as the social marketeers would say, and the variety of stories that lie behind competitors in the Scottish Tarmack Rally Championship (STRC) is like mining gold for a journalist.
The most common route is through a parent, grandparent or close friend who opens the door to the magical world of competition, events, crews, media and the madness that lies within. Many who watch Ben get the best out of his BMW 130i now might imagine the 29-year-old looks like an experienced driver, but the truth is he only started a few years ago after that first meeting with the lass from Inverness.
Grandad proved an inspiration with hill climbs in Aston Martin
“My family’s always kind of been interested in motorsport,” he explains. “My grandad used to do hill climbs back in the day in an Aston Martin DB4 GT, and he had an engineering background and stuff. He also used to marshal at F1 in the ‘70s and my dad has always been into his cars without doing any motorsport himself.
“So, I’ve always loved cars but just never really knew a way to get into motorsport as such … until Alison came along.”
Ben attended Stewart’s Melville School in Edinburgh, was a regular back row in the rugby team and came through the youth ranks at Currie, one of Scottish rugby’s top clubs. But he found an opportunity to indulge his love of vehicles while at school, building his own Land Rover before he was 17 and leaving school for an apprenticeship with Lotus and Volvo, who were in the same workshop in Edinburgh, before starting his own business at 19, which 10 years later has 12 staff.
Alison Horne can’t remember a time when she was not surrounded by cars, oil and talk of stages, diffs, offs, the exhilaration of victories and mood punctures of mechanical failures. None of it put her off wanting to be at the heart of rallying.
“I just always wanted to be involved in it as soon as possible,” she says. “I grew up trying to get a wee look at what was going on, wherever I could, and when I first navigated for dad in 2014, I was 16, which was basically as soon as I was old enough to get in the car, it felt like I’d been waiting for ages for the opportunity.
“I had to fight for the seat with dad’s regular navigator, Jim Howie, so, I didn’t get to sit in with him all the time, but he was brilliant for letting me and then my sister have the odd event. He kept threatening to retire but he never has, and it has been great to be able to follow him into rallying, and watch him, and speak to him and learn from him.”
Partnership split as Alison took to driving
With more than decade of co-driving under her belt, the 28-year-old was persuaded by Ben to give driving a shot, and they got a Mini Cooper S in 2023 and had a go, with Ben and then her sister Karen on the notes, and loved it. Ben says it’s been great to see Alison thrive behind the wheel, but it did mean he had to find a new co-driver.
Alison was enjoying a good start to this season until a problem forced retirement in the BeMore Colin Super Stage in Elgin last month and handling issues has ruled her out of the forthcoming Jim Clark Reivers Rally.
But Ben most definitely now has the bug and has quickly shown he has a knack for rapid driving. He has swiftly worked his way up the Tarmack category, initially with Alison’s experienced guidance, finishing fifth in the STRC in 2022, third in 2023 and being crowned both STR and Scottish Single Venue Champion in his trusty red BMW in 2024 after seven overall top tens, five tarmack podiums underlining his consistency.
With Alison enjoying driving and business taking up more time, Ben did fewer events last year but still managed to win the Memorial Garden Stages at RM Condor overall, and with John Shepheard now on the notes he is looking to see what comes in 2026.
Two retirements, a fifth and ninth overall so far sum up the mixed luck of rallying but praising the Pirelli tyres he turned to with great effect in 2024 he is looking forward to the twisty Borders roads of the Jim Clark Reivers Rally. He also has the small matter of prepping Andy and Adam Horne’s cars, now that he’s part of a renowned rally family.
The perfect team with plenty of rivalry
Alison and Ben clearly complement each other really well, both in rallying and business, and while Ben is making the big headlines the final word goes to the woman who brought him into the sport.
It comes from a mention of the Autosave Components Kinloss Winter Stages last year, where Ben hit a curb and Alison and Karen’s Mini motored past the BMW for a first top ten finish (Ben and John finishing 13th overall). There’s suddenly a bit of whooping and hollering in the office.
“Oh yeah, we have a good competitive relationship,” Alison adds. “It’s been great to see him learning the ropes pretty quickly, and to see him enjoying it. I’ve been around rallying for longer but I’m still learning how to get the best out of my Mini Cooper as a driver so we’re always comparing how we’ve done. I’m trying to find out how he and John have approached stages, and why they might be faster, so I can catch up with them.
“But, yeah, to go back to Kinloss, if you insist, it’s quite nice when Ben is coming to the experienced one asking how we went so fast!”