This is one of a series of comments on the 8th biennial symposium “Connoisseurship and the Collectible Car” held at the Revs Institute for Automotive Research in Naples, Florida in March 2015. [Link]

Cars are changing – robots are on their way.

And car collecting is changing. [Link]

While training as an architect Nick became a founding member of rock band ‘Pink Floyd’. He was already a motorsports enthusiast through his father Bill, an amateur racer and a director for the Shell Film Unit – best known for writing and directing the multi part ‘History of Motor Racing’.

Nick started racing in 1974 and now has a collection of competition cars spanning the history of motorsport from 1901 to the present day. All the cars are in racing condition and are used regularly.

He says he’s changed –

from collector to curator

Here is Nick driving a 1936 Auto Union Type C at Goodwood Festival of Speed – one of the extraordinary German grand prix cars that set the engineering standard in the middle of the twentieth century

Bernd Rosemeyer at Donington in 1936

Tazio Nuvolari in an Auto Union – see my performance piece with Mike Pearson (2013) [Link] [Link] [Link]

And here he is in pictures of the German Grand Prix from the Revs Library at Stanford [Link]