Gordon Crosby

Weekend. The race has been won. The work for the press has begun. Frederick Gordon-Crosby, known to his colleagues as Gorby, works for the worlds first car magazine, The Autocar. He is a real petrolhead, even though that term probably had not been coined yet in the 1930s. Even when he could not be at a race himself and colleague Sammy Davis explains how the race went, Gorby sketches the scene to go with it. Sammy tells the story, Freddy translates it. With charcoal, pen, pastel or oil paint.

But today he is there, among the still steaming machines. The smell, the dust, the drivers. The racing goggles come off. Freddy reads their eyes: fatigue, pride and, to be honest, relief. In his mind he sees the speed, the danger and the accompanying thrill they must have faced. He wants to show that speed. No rush, the illustrations are due this Friday. A little further on, Bryan de Grineau is sketching for the car magazine The Motor. His deadline is already this Tuesday. Poor Bryan, for him the race is only just beginning. Freddy packs up his sketches and races calmly back to his studio.

Freddy knows many cars inside and out. Lately he has made many technical cross sections of cars. When he goes to auto shows, he grabs his drawing gear and calmly captures every technical detail for The Autocar. Manufacturers sometimes get nervous about this and try to stop him. At the Paris auto show it even went so far that the police were called in. However, the gendarmerie let Freddy go, because he was not doing anything illegal. And besides, the work was beautiful!

Now it is all about the race. The speed. First in charcoal: lines. Then in oil paint: streaks, blobs, colors, life on the canvas. Just like in a race, full of momentum. A speed demon in blue drills its way through a hilly landscape, from a viewpoint where no one has ever been able to stand. Yes, this is how he is going to do it. Frederick Gordon-Crosby creates journalistic art. And he passes his talent on to his son, Peter. Freddy remains in the service of The Autocar all his life. That sounds longer than you might think. Gordon-Crosby had been ill for quite some time, and when his son Peter was killed in 1942 in a warplane, he ended his own life.

The Autocar lives on. Years later another talent appears on the payroll: James May, now known from Top Gear and The Grand Tour, writes for Autocar. But not for long. Out of boredom and frustration he creates a hidden message that you can only read if you put together the first letters of his columns. The editorial staff feel insulted and James May has to leave. But well, that is another story.