Cropley on cars: Remembering Bristol Cars' saviour Tony Crook

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.

Steve Cropley

Title: Editor-in-chief

Steve Cropley is the oldest of Autocar’s editorial team, or the most experienced if you want to be polite about it. He joined over 30 years ago, and has driven many cars and interviewed many people in half a century in the business.

Cropley, who regards himself as the magazine’s “long stop”, has seen many changes since Autocar was a print-only affair, but claims that in such a fast moving environment he has little appetite for looking back.

He has been surprised and delighted by the generous reception afforded the My Week In Cars podcast he makes with long suffering colleague Matt Prior, and calls it the most enjoyable part of his working week.

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