Another Goodwood Festival of Speed pic thread

[Lucky]

So that was pretty much the Style et Luxe dealt with. Some impressive cars, no doubt, but compared to the unique and weird concepts and stuff that's normally there most years I feel it was a missed opportunity really. Another spectacle that generally leaves me unmoved is Formula 1, moving from the sublime tothe ridiculous. As a race series it just bores me. The reasons for this are many, and are frankly too tedious in themselves to discuss here again. Rather like the Huarya (vom) if you take the details in isolation though, the cars themselves are phenomenal...


I've no clue whether that nose wing really needs about fifteen different layers and whether it actually makes it any more aerodynamically efficient than a single one would, but who cares when it's so mad and downright fascinating. Modern F1 cars are something I could look at for ages, and did. It's only a shame the racing lets them down


Who wouldn't have suspension made from carbon fibre if they could? I know I would




I have to be honest though, I'm just too Meh about F1 to fight my way through the masses and try to take any meaningful pics. So tough, there aren't any more. You can have some moving ones if you want


Apparently this grey one would normally be driven by Button or that irritating little smack-mouthed child Hamilton but presumably the FoS didn't pay enough for them to fill up their off-shore taxfree bank accounts sufficiently so it was some third-string fella called Turvey. Not Kevin from the Comic Strip though


but fair play to Mr Turvey (has to be read in a Brummie accent) he didn't mind giving it a bit of Larry


Good lad!


I'm afraid that's it for my modern F1 coverage, my interest in it stopped somehwere in the early 90s I'm afraid

[Lucky]

The setting of the FoS probably bears some attention at this point. I firmly believe its an intrinsic part of what makes the event feel so special every year. Beyond the awesomness of the cars on display, everywhere you look is Old British grandeur, the reek of ancient money and tradition


Over the entire event looms the monolithic bulk of Goodwood House. Fair play to Lord March for inviting thousands of the unwashed masses to trample through his garden every year. He's let Dougie Lampkin drive his trials bike through the entire house right to the roof, has complete strangers infest it, even launches fireworks off the roof


and of course indulges in a tiny bit of gently understated patriotism...


Every year a sculpture gets built on the roundel lawn out the front of the House, and I think this years' was maybe the most impressive yet


It was massive, and could be seen from almost anywhere in the lower grounds


It's a celebration of like a half-century of Lotus or whatever and was a single-surface Mobius Loop style Ouroboros (there's a word for you, derived fromt he ancient legend of the Earth Dragon eating its own tail) festooned with Lotii ... Lotusses... Lotufarians... errrm some cars. Fortunately it was such an amazing thing that no matter what angle you took a picture from it couldn't fail but to come out looking stupendous. Here's a few of my humble offerings...

































Astonishing thing

[Lucky]

Moving up the hill from the sculpture display we come to the main paddock where the other half of the entrants reside. This is where the two-wheeled exhibits are. Bikes are my first love, but I realise not everyone feels the same so I'll keep this bit fairly brief. Ish. If you don't like it, tough, lol

How about this to whet your appetite? Not only one of the rarest bikes ever built, but quite likely one of the rarest vehicles of any sort in the entire FoS. The legendary V8 MotoGuzzi. One of only two survivng, and I believe, the only running example


These were built to obliterate all on the Isle of Man TT and proved fallible but fast. They revved to a mere 13000rpm and had a top speed of 178mph. In 1955! Never again will we see their like, an across the frame V8 built like a Swiss watch. Awesome


This is what valvegear looks like. You can tell because nearly the entire assembly is outside the head on this ancient V-twin Guzzi


Ridden by legend and museum owner Sammy Miller, who still cares enough to not just cane the bike up the Hill but to wipe it down personally afterwards. Imagine Lewis Bloody Hamilton getting out the chamois and polishing up his F1 car after finishing Monaco?


...likewise John Surtees, living legend, the only man ever to win the top series of motocycle and car GPs. the only man who ever will, for that matter. And even at eighty-whatever still pushes his own bikes around the paddock and lumps them up on the stand himself


...and at the complete opposite end of the spectrum, the electric Saietta


Brave design, looks like a water buffalo having an alergic reaction to something. Weird


On the subject of white elephants, the mad two-stroke Honda powered hub-centre steered Elf GP bikes.


engineering insanity simply because they could. This is the sort of thing rules stifle and kill


The last four-stroke to win the championship before the two-stroke era, Phil Read's 1974 Fire Engine MV Agusta


the brave failure of the Foggy Petronas FP1, built to bring a new direction to Superbike racing but hamstrung by budget and build problems


Once upon a time any bike park would have at least one Micron exhaust in it, but now it's just one more British firm that's only a memory


Termignoni does sound more exotic, I suppose


A quick look at Valentino Rossi's really quite bad but undeniably amazing Desmoseidici GP racer. This is probably the bike in the modern era that's ended(ing) more careers than any other...


A bike you don't so much ride as just cling on to. Even Vale's cartoon tends to imply he doesn't feel 100% part of the experience


Not sure what the mesh is for, can't see anything being mad or deaf enough to want to go in there


102 RON. Fruity

[Lucky]

Some more iconic two-wheelers; "King" Kenny Roberts' OW31 500 2T Yamaha, in the best livery evar (nearly), the yellow Yamaha America Speedblock. Real mens' bikes have four separate spannies with stingers, y'know


Foggy's last (of four) WSB championship-winning Ducati 916 (996 variant). Good job Ducati aren't still sponsored by NatWest, I guess they'd be waiting a long time for the cheques to clear...


Niall Mackenzie's last (of three) BSB championship-winning Yamaha YZF750 Boost bike. I had a YZF 750 and it's one of the biggest regrets of my life trading it for a FireBlade. Which was awful, hateful bike. The YZF was the best road bike I've ever had. Some fella bought it from the shop and then cuaght a tankslapper on a cat's eye and smashed it into a tree, killing himself and the bike two weeks after I traded it in. Gutted


Aaron Slight's WSB RC45 Honda. One of the best bikes never to fulfill it's potential, it took the mercurial talent and outright weirdness of John Kocinski to finally give Honda the WSB title they so desparately wanted from this bike. Even Fogarty couldn't make it win the championship, though he forced it to win races. Slighty was one of WSBs unsung heroes, always plodding away on bikes that gave away weight and power advantages to the twins, never quite getting the break his talent and stoicism deserved


here's the man himself, one of New Zealand's best exports


Beuatiful HRC loveliness all over the thing. I don't especially love Hondas, their corporate racing ethos and I don't especially bond with their bikes but some of them like the RC30 and 45, the NRs and so on, just have that special something that gets the hairs ont he back of your neck up


Here's a change of pace, the Irving Vincent remanufactured Vinnies. The fella bought out the patents for the legendary Vincent V-twin engines and now makes these in his homeland Australia to modern manufacturing tolerances and on the best chassis components available. The Black Shadow was the first genuine superbike, a true 150mph bollide, and these give it a modern edge that makes it truly spectacular


Shame the man himself is so unapproachable, though. I've seldom met someone so surly, unengaging and downright miserable. Maybe he's bitter about going through life called "Irving"...


none of which should detract from the quality of the product though, which is excellent. Even shoehorned one into a sidecar outfit

[Lucky]

OK, that's enough bikes, I can see your eyes starting to glaze over there. The top paddock holds as much of a mix as the Cathedral, from old and modern F1 cars to modern edurance racers, rally cars, sportcscars, etc. In now especial order of importance lets go on a quick whistle-stop tour shall we?

In keeping with the "featured marque" of this years' FoS there was a huge marquee stuffed with the beautiful black and gold of Lotus


Just about all of these most evocative of racers was represented


I dunno why it should be that race cars always look their best when they're sponsored by fags or booze. Maybe it's that redolence of an era of larger than life characters, playboy lifestyles and a simpler time. Lotus have certainly had some Names to help adorn their livery with over the years as well




to say nothing of that legendary Ford Cosworth DFV stressed-member v8 hanging out the back


and more than their fair share of innovative aerodynamic aids


One of the strong attractions of the FoS is that it's one of few places you can get up close to iconic one-off cars and actually spend time looking and learning, actually seeing the designers' thought proceses in evolution. Such as the inboard brake discs to reduce the unsprung weight penalty of wheel-mounting them. With their nifty little cooling shrouds here on Jacky Ickxs' 72E


and fully open finger-slicers on the insanely complicated electronic-clutch 76


Got an unused fraction of bodywork going to waste? Just stick an oil cooler in the nose cone then. Get everything doing two jobs


More iconic colours and wonderful patination on the four-wheel drive Indy 500 "STP Special"


and it wasn't all puredbreed single seater Lotussiises. errrr Lotards? errr... Racing Europa "breadvan"


proving that TOMs didn't patent the idea of daft intake snorkels on MR2s


Lotus Cortina. That is all


and while we're admiring the Lotus range, there's always something going on. You never know when a priceless v12 Ferrari 312/68 might potter past, exhaust system as complex as the intestines of a cow


...or a racing Zonda. Hard to see how Pagani could get it so wrong following this up with the sickeningly ugly Huarya (vom)


There were a smattering of the bonkers CanAm cars around, too. The intake noise of this McLaren Chevy nearly outshone its exhaust


some random rally giants squeezed in amongst the sportscars. Fire up the Quattro

[Lucky]

Some Silver Arrows greats such as this one-piece body 300SL where the gullwings didn't even reach into the sill. Even much more harder to access than the "ordinary" version!


Spider version looks even more fantastic, if anything.


and of course the beauty of being an open-top with mad high sills is you can always just stick the exhaust out through them


W125 from 1937


This straight-eight supercharged beast developed 600bhp. Bears repeating, doesn't it? 600bhp in 1937. On spoked wheels, bicycle tyres and drum brakes. Hard men drove these. And we think we're in a golden age of motorsport, imagine how hard it was to even manufacture a straight-eight crank that would hold together back in the 30s! Sometimes I think we know nothing except arrogance


engine turned dash panel looks nice for no good reason other than they could, I guess


Some more examples of the diversity of the past; the March Cosworth 761


which provided a rather leftfield version of the concept of four-wheel drive


And of course the Elf-Tyrell P34 which went the opposite end and answered a question no-one had ever really asked


a sense of humour is a nice bonus, too. Luigi, he follow only the Ferrari


Endurance racers past and present, all different classes. The Gazoo LFA


Beastly Aston DBR in another iconic livery


errrr... no flies on us


Achingly beautiful leMans winning Bentley Speed 8


Kinda like an F1 car with a roof and then nailed to a carbon fibre table


The snappily-named Audi R18 eTron Quattro, adding the first hybrid to win leMans to Audis other plaudits such as first diseasel to win




No surprise Toyota are spending a few quid trying to prove hybrids really are the way of the future, too. The TS030HV-R. Damn, they give these things names that just trip offthe tongue, don't they!


Bit quicker than the average Prius. It appears that silly Japanese cuddly mascots aren't the sole province of McDonalds car park cruisers, too

[Lucky]

Right, we've about exhausted the paddocks now. But of course, the FoS being what it is we haven't even made it over to the infield yet. Bloody thing's enormous! The infield holds the manufacturers' stands and hundreds of trade stalls. Here's a quick whizz round some of the highlights...

This ratrod was just parked outside some random Goodwood Shop tent. Not really sure why or what it was about, but it does look mighty fine




Quite an unusual thing I'd have thought, cos despite it being Ford gear it seems to have a Lincoln lump in it.


The Mazda stand consistently seems to be one of the more underwhelming ones, though maybe that's simply because I'm partisan and always expect more. This year it was pretty feeble, though. A couple of MX-5s, some new anonymous soft-roader just like all the others and the Takeri concept thing, which looks slightly funky with some styling cues fromt he Furai and its brethren... but overall just looks like an Audi with different lights


...or maybe a BMW? Anyway, something pretty dull. It was clearly just a total mock-up thrown together, if you looked closely you noticed the brake calipers that looked like impressive eight-pots or something from a distance were just fake plastic covers and so on. Very underwhelming


the one real feature of interest were the camera mirrors. Which I'm betting won't see production....


As always, no mention whatsoever of rotary engines (last year as the anniversary of the leMans win was the only year the Mazda stand's had any reference to the glorious past of the rotary). Here's Ada proving why MX-5s are definitely not built for the above-average in height


In contrast, just over the way the Toyota stand showed how it should be done, with rather nice and knowledgeable young ladies to talk to you about the new GT86, a display of motorsport heritage out front, and these rather top motors inside;


this one's really rather gorgeous


shame about the bloody railing that made it impossible to get a decent photo lol


Like many top Jap cars though, they sorta never knew quite when to stop fiddling when they got round to the back


certainly compared to the straightforward detail at the other end


The Lotus stand was massive, as Lotus seem to have taken over the world lately. This Elan looked nice in lemon yellow, and those of us at that funny time in life will no doubt be thinking of Diana Rigg in the Avengers at this point.... No? Just me then


Lotus endurance racer thing. Is there any pie they don't have a finger in?


Jagaur stand was perhaps most notable for having the one-time contender for fastest car in the world title in the front


Such daft styling it was out of date before it was launched..which oddly means it's never seemed to go out of date. Weird

[Lucky]

The Harley-Davidson stand had some mighty impressive custom bikes as well as new models, and the rather odd feature of being able to pick up and play a new Gibson Les Paul should you feel so inspired. Needless to say Ada did


Shame it was out of tune and the electronics for the pickup meant you couldn't tune it up. Doh!


Still, the bikes were nice


Fat!


Nice to see metalflake and gold leaf have never quite gone out of fashion. Nice tooling on the leather saddle too


and nothing tops a decent pneumatic cartoon laydee between your legs


The BMW stand had peoples like Murray Walker and Tiff Needel doing sorta talks to the crowd over a PA. But it also had a chrome M3 and a gold 6 series so we didn't hang around lol


This being Goodwood even the trade stands are mind-blowing. I know people pay ridiculous money for certain numberplates, but there's clearly more money in it than I thought. The stand selling registrations used just one car to advertise their services;


but it was quite an expensive car!




Some stands used more traditional eye-candy to woo in the punters. This is the nice young lady from the Crazy Horse custom motorbike stand. I never even noticed she had legs till Hannah pointed it out later, I only meant to take a pic of her very glamorous welies. Honest


Of course, some stands let their product do all the talking. If, for example, you should be the proud owner of a 458 Italia and find yoursef in need of a ful titanium exhaust system complete with all valvery and plumbing to liberate a few more prancing horses, you'd have found it hard to bypassthe Akrapovic stand...


...I remember when they were just Skorpion knocking out straight tubes for BSB bikes lol. And of course there were other manufacturers catering for those stuck with a boring old v12...

[Lucky]

You could, of course, buy an entire car should you so wish, though how you'd get it home in your handbag was presumably another issue


T-Bird yours for a fiver under 17 grand, sir




Bill Shepherd Mustang had their usual mix of modern


and ancient


Beautiful colour. Wild Cherry or something IIRC


Not all the trade stands sold unaffordable stuff though (Gulf logo T-shirt sir? Certainly, that'll be £44 to you. 44-smegging-quid! 'koff). Lady H's natty new hat was a bargain at only a tenner!


And of course, being Goodwood, no-one would be content with just the two dimensions of stuff being on the ground. There had to be a third dimension too. The Typhoon Eurofighter popped by to scare some seagulls


Awesome thing, utterly astonishing. Pulling some -9G manouvres at low level. And you thought your car cornered hard...


Only tiny niggles are not enough toilets, massively crowded (which is only to be expected) and food is stupidly expensive, like £5 for chips expensive. But at least it was edible, which is unlike the overpriced filth you get at places like the Pod. Queues for everything, especially ice cream lol. Ada needs to shrink or Miss Tracy needs to grow, but I suspect it's too late for both of them


And that's it. If that's all I can find to grumble about, it must be a very top day out indeed. Which it is, the FoS is the top day out in the show calendar, simply the hugest, most diverse, most expensive, most astounding show in the world. I eneded the day with sore feet and sunbrun, despite the showers. If you spend the entire day walking around looking at priceless motoring artifacts, though, a word of caution. You will end up looking like this...



Right, thanks for looking in. I'm spent. Now go away

[ian65]

Great photos nik, thanks for posting.
some amazing classics there... always wanted to go to Goodwood but always seem to have something else on that weekend.