EOIN YOUNG, AUTOCAR’S longest-standing contributor of the modern era, died last week in New Zealand, close to where he was born 75 years ago.
He’ll be best remembered for his gossipy, fearlessly written column, Straight From The Grid (later From The Grid and then Eoin Young’s Diary). Such was its popularity — it appeared in seven other titles around the world — that Autocar published it for 31 years from 1967.
Born in 1939, Eoin Spence Young started work as a bank clerk in Timaru, New Zealand, and began writing motorsport stories for his local paper, the Timaru Herald, as a hobby.
He became friendly with a local club driver, Bruce McLaren, and when McLaren won New Zealand’s ‘Driver to Europe’ scholarship, Young kept in touch, ghosting his columns in…