Giltrap a passionate motorsport patron
The name Sir Colin Giltrap is synonymous with car dealerships.
However, anyone with an interest in motor racing will know him more for his support of talented young Kiwi drivers.
Without passionate patrons such as Sir Colin, those with a gift to pilot very fast cars would never get a shot at the big time.
His most successful protege is Scott Dixon, the six-time IndyCar champion and Indianapolis 500 winner. He is one of a plethora of highly successful Kiwi drivers who have or had some part of their racing gear adorned with a Giltrap Group decal.
Sir Colin himself was a racer. He and Jimmy Palmer raced a Volvo in the 1963 Wills Six-Hour endurance race at Pukekohe.
He ran the same car in the Sandown 500 with Ivan Segedin and they won their class, beating Palmer and Jackie Stewart.
As his business grew, Sir Colin had less time to race, and one of the first drivers he became involved with after hanging up his helmet was Jim Richards.
He helped put together the Falcon in which Richards won his Australian Touring Car championship.
The list of current Sir Colin alumni is well known. Some of the other drivers who have sat in one of his cars include Larry Perkins, Danny Sullivan, Stirling Moss, Denny Hulme and Peter Brock. On the rally front, he had Rod Millen drive an RX3 in the Heatwave rally and helped Possum Bourne in his early days.
Having raced motorcycles, karts and cars off and on for nearly 40 years (and written about motorsport for nearly as long), my two best memories are having dinner with childhood hero and icon Chris Amon, and sitting next to Sir Colin at the 2015 Le Mans 24 Hour.
Earl Bamber, another protege, won that year, driving with Nico Hulkenberg and Nick Tandy.
I remember sitting next to Sir Colin and looking at the leaderboard with under two hours to go and seeing two Kiwi drivers — Bamber leading Brendon Hartley, another he supported — sitting at the top.
Sir Colin was a man of few words, but the smile on that day and at that time said it all for a man whose passion for motor racing ran very deep indeed.