Very sad to say a final goodbye to my old friend Tony Crook, owner, saviour and chief advocate of Bristol Cars for more than half a century, whose death has been announced.
Crook was a remarkable bloke, a Stirling Moss-level racing driver after the war who raced at the first Goodwood meeting.
He presided over the creation of Bristol’s line of ‘gentleman’s GTs’ and did more than anyone to create Bristol’s tradition for bespoke engineering.
Crook wasn’t the easiest person to get on with, but he was generous, good-humoured and extremely funny.
I’ll never forget our lunches near Bristol’s famed Kensington showroom in London; Crook would spin tales of racing, flying and selling cars, and before you knew it the afternoon was kaput.
He was a great man of motoring, the sort they don’t make any more.
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