Quadruple European Rallycross Champion Olle Arnesson from the town of Likenäs (Värmland) in Sweden is 58 years old today.

Swedish four times European Rallycross Champion Olle Arnesson today became 58 years old and the whole crew of ERC24 would like to express its birthday wishes to the Rallycross legend from the town of Likenäs near Höljes in Värmland.

Born on April 21 1954 at Dalby the son of a haulage contractor and by then lorry driver of his father’s company Arnessons Åkeri AB entered the ERC in 1977 driving a Porsche 911. In 1978 Olle won the GT category of the Finnish ERC round at Hyrylä from Austrian Andy Bentza (Lancia Stratos HF 3.0) and his compatriot Per Eklund (Porsche 911 Carrera), his first European success. From 1979 on Arnesson was an ERC regular, winning the European titles of 1979 and 1980 (both years GT Division Champion with Porsche 911 Carrera), while in 1983 and 1986 he drove a long Audi quattro to overall victory of the by then Division 2.

In 1987, the first year of the so-called ‘Group B era’ of Rallycross, the quadruple Euro champ made good use of a short Audi Sport quattro S1 to claim the third place behind ERC winner Seppo Niittymäki (Peugeot 205 Turbo 16 E2) and runner-up Matti Alamäki (Lancia Delta S4). In the following years Olle was a rather rare guest at the ERC venues, due to commitments for his family business. After not perfectly recovering from a serious road-car crash Arnesson started a project to drive an Audi A4 SuperCar in Rallycross, but eventually gave up and retired from the sport.

At the time being Olle is backing the two-car Škoda Fabia project of his friend Peter Hedström and is expected to participate in selected 2012 or 2013 ERC and/or SRC rounds.