Born in December 1936, the son of a garage owner from Rotherham, Trevor Taylor was the product of later period of 500cc Formula 3 racing, initially using a JAP engined Staride and later an ex-Stuart Lewis-Evans Cooper Norton. Ten victories in 1958 earned him the British F3 Championship and, after a frustrating year in 1959 spent with his own F2 Cooper, he received an invitation to run his own Lotus 18 as a second works car alongside Jim Clark the following season.

Taylor and Clark shared the 1960 British Formula Junior title and Trevor retained it in 1961 before joining Clark in the Lotus Grand Prix team the following year. He managed a second place to Hill's BRM at Zandvoort, but suffered from some major accidents, many of which were definitely not his fault, and a succession of mechanical disasters, he gradually slipped further into Clark's shadow through to the end of 1963 when Chapman replaced him with Peter Arundell.

In 1964 he joined Innes Ireland in the BRP- BRM team run by Alfred Moss and Ken Gregory, but netted only a sixth place finish at Watkins Glen. Financial pressures caused the team to close its doors at the end of the year and that was the end of Taylor's F1 career.

Trevor loses out to Stewart Lewis-Evans at the Grand Prix meeting at Silverstone in July 1958 due to mechanical woes.