Taylor Walsh

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 A trained mechanical engineer with a decade in professional motorsport, Taylor Walsh co-founded Atkinson Walsh to do what he had always wanted to do: preserve significant post-war cars and find their next custodians. 

 

He first drove a car at six, thanks to his father, a lifelong Jaguar man with a weakness for Italian two-wheelers. “I grew up around fast Jaguars and Vespas,” he says. “One taught me what a car was supposed to feel like and the other taught me that a thing can be beautiful and completely impractical at the same time, and that this is not an argument against it.” Born in 1994 to notably older parents, he was raised on ‘The Saint’, ‘The Avengers’, ‘The Persuaders!’ and Connery-era Bond, which left him with a taste in cars that runs thirty years ahead of his birth certificate. 

 

He holds degrees in mechanical engineering and in business management and logistics. “Understanding what’s wrong with a car is one skill,” he notes. “Getting the right car, the right parts and the right people into the same building at the same time is an entirely different one.” 

 

His motorsport career has seen him work with the FIA at the World Rally Championship, alongside Formula One world champions, British Touring Car champions and former Grand Prix drivers, and with broadcasters including Sky Sports. In parallel, he built a marketing and commercial agency across automotive, lifestyle and sport, working with manufacturers including Jaguar, Land Rover, Volvo and Mercedes-Benz. As a result, he reads the modern market as fluently as the historic one. 

 

He has driven Grand Prix, Le Mans and Mille Miglia cars, single-seaters, GTs and modern supercars. His specialism, though, is 1949 to 1970, the era of the Mille Miglia and of Le Mans at its most romantic. His heroes run from Phil Hill, Carroll Shelby, Graham Hill and John Surtees to Lauda, Senna, Mansell and Alonso. 

 

Taylor met Peter while both were working at a used car dealership. “We realised very quickly that we were kindred spirits,” he says. “I’d always wanted a restoration company and never quite known how to go about starting one. If I was ever going to do it with anyone, it was going to be Peter.” 

 

A regular at the Goodwood Members’ Meeting and Rétromobile in Paris, Taylor lives in the Ribble Valley with his wife, Eleanor, and son, Theodore, who has already declared a firm interest in cars.​