Simon Taylor (journalist)

Simon Taylor
Born	August 8, 1944
Nationality	English
Occupation	Motoring and motor sport journalist, Author
Known for	Chairman Haymarket Magazines

Simon Taylor, born 8 August 1944, is a motor sports journalist who writes for several publications, including a monthly in-depth interview in Motor Sport magazine in the series 'Lunch With...' and a regular column under the name of 'Full Throttle' in Classic & Sports Car Magazine.^[1]

Taylor joined the weekly motor racing magazine Autosport straight from university in 1966 as an editorial assistant. In 1967 the magazine was taken over by the Haymarket Publishing Group and he was promoted to Editor in 1968, still aged only 23. In 1971 he forsook writing for publishing management, and went on to devise and launch several new magazines, including What Car? in 1973 and Classic & Sports Car in 1982. In 1984 Haymarket purchased Autocar (the world's oldest motoring magazine) from IPC and subsequently successfully relaunched it. Taylor's career progressed to become managing director of Haymarket Magazines.^[2]

In 1976 he began doing motor race commentaries on radio, and became BBC Radio's Formula 1 correspondent until 1997, when he spent a year as part of ITV's F1 presentation team. He narrates the 1981, 1985, 1987, 1991, 1992 and 1996 official Formula One season review videos produced by the Formula One Constructors Association. He retired as chairman of Haymarket Magazines in 2000 and became a freelance writer, mainly about motor sports history.

He is the author of several books, including AC Heritage (1996), The Glory of Goodwood (with Mike Lawrence and Doug Nye, 1999), Murray Walker's Formula One Heroes (with Murray Walker, 2000) and The Shelsley Walsh Story (2005), and he completed and prepared for publication My View from the Pit Wall, the posthumous autobiography of Lotus F1 team manager Peter Warr. His most recent book is Motor Sport Greats in Conversation, a hardback collection of his "Lunch With..." series of articles from Motor Sport.

He has a small part, playing himself as the English-language BBC commentator, in the 2013 Ron Howard-directed film Rush about the battle between Niki Lauda and James Hunt in the 1976 F1 season, and also helped with editing the film and scripting some of the dialogue spoken by the broadcast commentators in other languages.

He is married with two grown-up children, both of whom are journalists, and lives in Chiswick, London. He has a small collection of classic cars and competes regularly in historic motor sport with his unique 1950 HWM sports-racing car The Stovebolt Special.

References

1. "Ask The Team". classicandsportscar.com. Classic & Sports Car. 2006-07-11. Retrieved 2010-01-02.
2. "The Morgan Three Wheeler Club". mtwc.co.uk. The Morgan Three-Wheeler Club Ltd. Retrieved 2010-01-02.