My mate, the late, great Paul Cockburn might not be too familiar to readers of this magazine. But even if you weren’t familiar with the man, you might remember his lethal BRG E-Type roadster with its embiggened, Webered hot-rod engine and Simmons alloys. Of course, if you ever picked up a copy of Motor magazine, you’d for sure know and love the genius of one of the most intelligent, insightful blokes I’ve ever met, not to mention a fabulous writer. And a tremendous human being into the bargain.
Cockburn was good at his craft because he was a lateral thinker. But more than that, even if his pronouncements seemed a bit strange at the time, a few years would usually bring them into focus as the nuggets of wisdom they’d always been.
Many’s the time I’ve had to apply tomato sauce to my hat and chow down after a discussion (they were never arguments) we had that eventually went his way, under the sheer weight of evidence. A great example was many years ago when I was laying bets on hydrogen power being
