Sir Laurance Ponceby mused in his Encyclopaedia of Titled Racing Drivers: ''If Stirling Moss was the greatest grand prix pilot never to be world champion, surely Oversteer was the greatest never to finish a race.''

In 603 starts, he came close many times. In Monaco, 1932, Oversteer famously ran out of fuel on the first lap and had his servants push his car across the line - 52 times. He was judged a ''non-finisher'' on a technicality relating to the servants' dress code.

Born in Frumley-on-Old Money in 1909, Oversteer was the eldest son of the Third Earl of Berkeley Hunt. He was sent to Eton then Oxford then Brooklands, where he found his metier, first as a riding mechanic prized for his lightness, then as the driver of a series of aero-engined specials, prized for his tail-happy technique and fearless stupidity.

His double, triple and, on one occasion, quad-engined specials were widely judged too powerful, tearing themselves - and Oversteer - to shreds. When the third version of his 27-cylinder aero-engined Flippy Floppy Pip Pop was fitted with ribbed steel tyres, it dug a hole in the Brooklands track so deep it was later used as an underground fuel depot.

During World War II, Oversteer led the Grand Prix Espionage unit, which was charged with ensuring British racing teams were competitive as soon as hostilities ceased. At one stage, he smuggled a complete eight-cylinder Mercedes W125 engine out of Germany in his underpants. Shortly before D-Day, he was captured and tortured in France, but Oversteer refused to give up English axle ratios or engine firing orders.

When the modern formula one championship started in 1950, Oversteer failed to secure a works drive. Instead, he built his own monoposto based on the Austin A40 Dorset. He managed to lead the first lap of every GP in 1950 and 1951, without once completing the second.

He later reflected that the Dorset's 1.2-litre straight four, modified to achieve a 100-to-one compression ratio, might have been overtaxed trying to keep up with the

350bhp-plus supercharged Alfas. After one engine failure, the cylinder head was found 18 kilometres away. Oversteer lost the family fortune in the 1960s in a doomed attempt to set up a US sales operation for the Dago, a low-cost Eastern Bloc sedan about which the name was not the most unfortunate thing.

He returned to prosperity in the 1970s as executive producer of a series of eight-millimetre films starring his seventh wife, known simply as Kitten. This financed another F1 foray. At 63, Oversteer was the oldest in the field and preserved his perfect non-finishing record.

Ground-effects F1 cars aggravated his arthritis, so Oversteer turned to production racing, breaking down and/or crashing at every British circuit before repeating the feat in various European championships. His only Bathurst 1000 attempt, at the age of 81, ended when scrutineers discovered a Rolls-Royce Conway turbofan jet engine under the bonnet of his 10-year-old Triumph Dolomite.

Last Tuesday, Oversteer's life was cruelly cut short when he engaged first gear accidentally during high-speed engine testing of the 48-cylinder Bugatti Veyron special he was building on the second floor of his Suffolk Manor House.

He is survived by his estranged 23-year-old wife, Esmeralda, his favourite hunting dogs and a small coterie of young and impeccably well-groomed Sicilian men. We shall not see his like again.

Tony Davis returns on Australia Day.