Robert Walker grew up in Hayward, California. He taught vocational education and journalism at both the secondary and junior college level for twenty years. His enthusiasm for convertibles and sports cars was cemented in the late 1980s, and in 1998 he purchased the remains of a wrecked 1963 Cobra that had been totaled and abandoned in the late 1970s. He spent over ten years collecting original parts and fifteen years putting the car back together as a competition Cobra in period correct racing form, as the car would have competed in the 1960s. He is the author of Cobra Pilote: The Ed Hugus Story and the two-volume series Shelby Cobras, also published by Dalton Watson.