Anyone with any sort of passion for motorsport or motoring across the last half century cannot have failed to encounter Simon Taylor in some capacity.
For starters he will sound familiar, as BBC radio’s motorsport voice for more than 20 years reporting on Formula 1 and Le Mans, and Taylor was also a regular TV commentator, presenter, narrator and pundit, including when ITV took over F1 coverage in 1997.
But that is just the start of it for Taylor because as a journalist, commentator, publisher and historian he has – as we will discover – spent decades right at the motorsport frontline and developed close relationships with some of its most revered figures.
Taylor joined Autosport straight from university, and just two years later in 1968 at the age of 23 became its editor. He moved on to be a publisher for Autosport’s proprietor Haymarket, and in that role devised and launched magazines such as What Car? and Classic & Sports Car. Plus he took this very publication under his wing for a time.
He has interviewed in depth many figures from the motorsport pantheon and has even driven plenty of the famous racing cars himself. He also has authored several books and was involved – including playing himself – in the famous Ron Howard movie Rush that charted the famous 1976 F1 title battle. Throughout, and to this day, Taylor in addition has found some time to compete himself.
And as Taylor next month reaches his 80th year he remains active on the motorsport and motoring scene in a variety of ways on and off track. Indeed as he very kindly gave his time to answer the readers’ questions he was very shortly off to a RAC function, then he was heading to the Goodwood Festival of Speed to enter one of his classic car collection in a concours d’elegance.
He insists throughout our conversation that he has been lucky to have done what he’s done. But the ever-passionate, energetic and engaging Taylor appears to us a lot like someone who has made their luck.
So with all this, let’s start at the beginning.
Question: Where did your motorsport passion start?
Richard Hexford
Via email
Simon Taylor: “From the pram virtually, my mother always complained that the first word I could say was not ‘mummy’ it was ‘car’. And more specifically I had an uncle who got the Autocar every week, which was then the best-read and best-established motor magazine. And he used to give me piles of the issues when he’d read them all, and even before I could read I could look at the pictures, and I kept all those Autocars and subsequently the company I was running Haymarket was able to buy Autocar, and the magazine continues and over the years I have been able to get my run of Autocars back to 1899, it actually was launched in 1895.
“So all through my childhood I drank in all this information and like kids do I retained it all. When I was seven I persuaded my parents, I was born and bred in Somerset and I discovered at age of seven that there was a race meeting going on at a place called Castle Combe, which I’d never heard of, and I insisted on being taken there. It was Easter Saturday 1952 and among other things Stirling Moss won the Formula 3 race, and of course I was absolutely mesmerised.
“That being 1952 the race was round the perimeter track, rather like Goodwood, of a wartime airfield and we all stood in the rain behind one length of string, quite a good crowd and we were all protected from the track merely by a length of string because things were very primitive in those days.
