Graham Robson 1936 – 2021
We were saddened to hear that our friend Graham Robson had passed away last week. Graham was a prolific author, penning nearly 170 books on motor sport cars, companies and competitors, with many being about Cosworth and their engines.
He started his motoring career as a design engineer at Jaguar in 1957. “I was expecting to be their chief engineer within 10 years”, he once said, “and when that didn’t work I gradually got involved in motor sport.” After dabbling in rally events as a competitor, he switched his full-time career from automotive to motor sport. His move into motor racing saw him become the competition secretary for Triumph, followed by brief periods at Rootes Group (aka Chrysler) and then Kangol.
But his true passion lay in writing about the cars and companies that he worked on and competed against. He quickly built up a vast portfolio of books, writing tirelessly. “It’s a disease that very few people suffer from, and I do!”, he once quipped.
I got to meet Graham when he launched his book on the Cosworth DFV in 2015, and we became very good friends over the following years. It was a privilege to help him with his more recent books, including the 6th edition update of his hugely popular book on Cosworth, “The Search for Power”. I got to see first-hand how he approached each subject with meticulous attention to both detail and accuracy.
His workload, even up to just a few months ago, was immense. Not only did he write encyclopaedic tomes on marques like Cosworth, Ford, Mini, Triumph, etc, but he also regularly contributed articles to magazines such as Fast Ford and Classic & Sports Car. In addition, he was an excellent public speaker, attending events all over the world to talk (with great enthusiasm) about companies like Cosworth. In this talk https://vimeo.com/272640084 that he gave 3 years ago at Blackhawk Museum in the USA he speaks authoritatively about Cosworth’s time in F1.
Graham was extremely thorough in everything that he did – he even wrote his own obituary! You can view it on Classic & Sports Car’s website here: https://www.classicandsportscar.com/obituaries/rip-graham-robson-1936-2021
