LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

WINNER Robert Brooks

The recipient of our Lifetime Achievement award has, literally, been a towering presence in the world of classic cars for 40 years. Born in 1956 and formerly billed as the world’s fastest auctioneer, 6ft 4in-tall Londoner Robert Brooks originally set out to be a racing driver but ran out of money before he was out of his teens and subsequently followed his father into the auction game. After joining Christie’s he enjoyed a meteoric rise, becoming the company’s youngest recorded auctioneer, being appointed a director at just 27 and joining the board three years later. At the age of just 33 and with support of the two ‘E’s – ever-present wife Evelyn and the ever-supportive Evert Louwman – in 1989 he took the bold step of going it alone, absorbing much of the Christie’s Collector Car Department in the process, and launched Robert Brooks Auctioneers Ltd straight into the teeth of a massive market crash. His fledgling company rode out the storm, continued to grow and take on more experts, notably the refugees from Sotheby’s led by Malcolm Barber, and merged with Bonhams to form Bonhams & Brooks at the turn of the millennium. After absorbing Phillips two years further down the line, the group went simply under the name of Bonhams, while US auction house Butterfield & Butterfield was a further acquisition. Just over a year ago Brooks successfully negotiated the sale of the 500-employee multinational to private equity company Epiris, with the motoring department then responsible for just under a third of Bonhams’ £710-million turnover. Despite his huge success as a businessman, Brooks will forever be remembered first and foremost for his most memorable moment wielding the gavel. The then world record sale of the Kellner-bodied 1931 Bugatti Type 41 at a packed Royal Albert Hall in 1987 epitomised the pinnacle of the first classic car boom (and much of the 1980s actually) before it all came crashing down in dramatic fashion. Truth be told, the sale came shortly after the stockmarket crashed, the hammer price of £5.5 million less resonant of the moment that the classic car market peaked than the moment classic cars cemented themselves in the alternative investment market along with fine art and fine wine. Brooks has since set two more world price benchmarks for classics, first with the Mercedes W196 and then with a Ferrari 250 GTO. Jamie Knight, who worked with Brooks for 34 years and is currently MD of Bonhams, said: ‘Robert can look back on his career with immense pride and satisfaction. He has been the most important player in the old car auction world and achieved truly unparallelled success.’ Despite all the mercurial Brooks’ business achievements, it’s likely that he would be just as happy to be remembered as a racing driver. He competed extensively in both Historic and modern motorsport and is a full member of the British Racing Drivers’ Club, not to mention a former chairman.

‘Brooks has since set two more world records for classic cars, with the Mercedes-Benz W196 and a Ferrari 250 GTO’