Waldegård won the Swedish Rally Championship in both 1967 and 1968, establishing himself as a formidable talent in Scandinavia before stepping onto the international stage. His first major international victory came on the 1969 Monte Carlo Rally, driving a Porsche 911 — a result that announced him as a serious contender for top-level rally honours. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s he became closely associated with Porsche machinery, also entering the mid-1970s European Championship for Rallycross Drivers with a privately entered Porsche Carrera RSR. His best result in that series was runner-up to Austrian Franz Wurz in the 1974 Embassy European Rallycross Championship.
During the mid-1970s, Waldegård drove for the Alitalia-backed Lancia team alongside Italian frontrunner Sandro Munari. The relationship came to a dramatic head at the 1976 Rallye Sanremo. Holding a four-second advantage over Munari entering the final stage, Waldegård was expected by team management to concede the lead and stage an artificial fight to the finish. Instead, he disobeyed team orders and crossed the line four seconds ahead of Munari. The insubordination ended his time with Lancia, and he moved to Ford in late 1976.
Driving the Ford Escort RS1800, Waldegård delivered some of the most impressive performances of his career in 1977, winning three of rallying's most demanding events in a single season: the East African Safari Rally, the Acropolis Rally, and the RAC Rally. These victories demonstrated his versatility across vastly different terrain — from the rock-strewn plains of Kenya to the loose gravel of Greece and the forest stages of Britain.
In 1979, the World Rally Championship held its first dedicated manufacturers' and drivers' title series. Waldegård seized the opportunity, competing for Ford and later Mercedes-Benz. He clinched the drivers' championship at the final round, the Rallye Côte d'Ivoire in the Ivory Coast, finishing second behind Hannu Mikkola but doing enough to take the title. The victory made him the first-ever WRC Drivers' Champion.
Waldegård continued to compete at the highest level long after most drivers of his generation had retired. His last WRC victory came on the 1990 Safari Rally, driving for Toyota, making him the oldest driver to win a World Rally Championship event — a record he held until the 2022 Monte Carlo Rally. That achievement spanned more than two decades of top-level competition and underlines the consistency that defined his career.
His final competitive rally start was derailed by injury: a crash during the 1992 Safari Rally resulted in a broken arm, effectively ending his front-line career after thirty years of competition.
Waldegård also competed in circuit endurance racing on a limited basis. In the 1970 Targa Florio, held on closed public roads in Sicily and widely regarded as a rally-type endurance event, he shared a factory-supported Porsche 908/3 entered by John Wyer with Richard Attwood and finished fifth. In later years, he remained connected to the rally community: in September 2008 he drove a Porsche 911 at the Colin McRae Forest Stages Rally in Perth, Scotland, a commemorative event for the late champion who died in 2007.
Waldegård's career arc — four-wheel drift mastery in the 1960s, team order defiance in the 1970s, championship glory in 1979, and record-setting victories into the 1990s — places him among the most complete rally drivers of the twentieth century. His 1979 title was not only a personal triumph but a landmark in the sport's history as the first-ever WRC Drivers' Championship. He died on 29 August 2014 of cancer at the age of 70.
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