A car show like no other, the Goodwood Festival of Speed, in West Sussex, is a true motoring festival, a dream-come-true for car enthusiasts in the fascinating setting of the estate of the Duke of Richmond, the creator and promoter of the event.
The festival is packed with events, like the legendary Hill Climb, a 1.86 km long uphill race that every year attracts vehicles of all types, from street-legal models and vintage F1 cars to the latest supercars and hypercars. The race was surprisingly won by a McMurtry Spéirling, 1000 hp, all-electric mini-hypercar, in just 39.08 seconds. It was the best performance ever for any vehicle at the Festival of Speed and eight-hundredths of a second faster than the record set by the zero-emission Volkswagen ID.R super sports car in 2019.
It was an RAF airport
The circuit is carved out of a former airfield used by the RAF in World War II surrounded by magnificent manicured green lawns. The car park outside the event is unique in itself with an amazing line-up of classic cars parked there. They are simply the cars of the visitors who have come to Goodwood as spectators and for the occasion have decided to leave their more comfortable but more mundane everyday cars in the garage.
The past mixes with the present and, above all, with the future at Goodwood and this year's edition was dedicated to “The Innovators - Masterminds of Motorsport”. There was also room for robotics and aviation, always popular in Britain with the traditional parade of vintage Spitfires.
Many previews
For car manufacturers, the Goodwood Festival of Speed has become an important opportunity to present national or world premières of cars that are almost always out of the ordinary. Here are some of the models that were on display on the castle grounds: BMW M3 Touring, iX1 and iX M60; Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 e-Performance and 911 Sport Classic; Pagani Huayra Codalunga; Range Rover Sport and Defender 130; McLaren Artura; Rolls-Royce Wratith “Black Badge”; Maserati Grecale and MC20, Mercedes-Amg One; Lotus Eletre; Polestar 2; Genesis GV70. Standing out from the crowd was Bentley which brought together the best of its collection to celebrate the 40 years of its turbocharged engines, starting with the 1991 Turbo R (of which 4,111 were made), the 2012 Continental GT V8 (the first with the eight-cylinder Audi engine) and the 2003 Continental GT, the first with the W12, here in its original 560 hp version.
The Speed Six is back
Alongside a line-up of classics, Bentley displayed the complete range of models currently on the market and also announced that twelve new examples of the Speed Six will be built in the Mulliner department as part of the Continuation Series programme following the principles that created the Continuation Series Blower.
The twelve cars will fit the same 200-hp inline-six as the original models (and like those can reach a top speed of 200 km/h). They have all already been sold, for £1.5 million each. For the record, Bentley built only 182 units of the car between 1928 and 1930 and they used two units from the series (namely, the Old Number 3, which competed in the 1930 Le Mans 24 Hours and a 1929 car from the Heritage Collection) to gather all the information needed to make the replicas.
