Goodwood Revival thrills again despite the rain

Once more we see that racing does not suffer from rain – although the spectators might!

A week after the Hampton Court Concours, it was time to spend a day at the Revival again, which is always a highlight of my year. It’s not so much about the racing – well, the results, anyway, even though the track action was often enthralling, as many of you will have seen from the excellent Revival YouTube channel, with lots of drivers spinning off what was at times a very slippery track – but the Revival atmosphere and general vibe is unmatched. Of course, it’s steeped in nostalgia, with not just the cars but also the retail areas and especially the focus on retro fashion and style, with a large proportion of attendees sporting period fashions, despite the (very) changeable weather.

Last year, the weather in the week leading up to the Revival, and for much of the event itself, was very wet, leaving the car parks more like farmers’ fields. Unfortunately, this year was not much better – after the dryest and warmest summer in years here, the weather in the run up to and including the weekend reverted to what seems to have become the norm for most of my recent Goodwood visits, that is, wet and windy. The car parks suffered again, though seemed to deal with the rain better than last year. This time I decided to take my Mercedes C123, and my fellow enthusiast and I arrived bright and early in very heavy rain on Saturday morning and immediately sought shelter, finding it in the Earls Court Motor Show hall for coffee and muffins.

Inside the hall was an interesting display of BMW art cars, as well as a small celebration of 50 years of the BMW 3 series. My favourite of the art cars was the 320i Turbo painted in comic-book style by Roy Lichtenstein in 1977, but I liked them all.

One of the great things about our hobby is how friendly people are, and we sat and chatted with a number of other seekers of refuge from the rain, including a couple of chaps from Sweden, wearing mechanic’s overalls, one of them the proud owner of a Triumph TR250 and after stocking up on breakfast calories, set off for a wander around as many paddocks as we were able to get in to – we were not disappointed!

While I’m a huge fan of Porsche’s classic road cars, their sports racing cars of the ‘60s were also gorgeous, and were well represented by 904’s, a 910 and my favourite, a 906 – one of the best-looking sports racers ever, to my eyes.

This year the Revival celebrated two of motoring and motor sport’s great names, one being Alfa Romeo, marking 100 years since winning the first Manufacturer’s World Championship, with over 40 stunning examples of the marque on show, including several beautiful 6C and 8C Monza’s, Giulia TZ’s, Giulietta Ti’s and much more – enough for an entire article.

The second was a celebration of the great Jim Clark, with over 30 of the cars he drove on display. Like others of his era, Clark raced a wide variety cars – saloons, F1, F2, Indianapolis – and excelled in them all. It was a particular treat to see his 1965 Indy 500-winning Lotus Ford.

One of my favourite classes was the Stirling Moss Memorial Trophy, with a grid filled with beautiful early 1960’s GT’s such as Ferrari 250GT’s, E-types and Cobra’s among others.

The Freddie March Trophy was also contested by some wonderful cars, including several Jaguar C-types and a couple Aston Martin DB3S’s while the RAC TT, besides my beloved Porsche 906, numbered a couple of Bizzarrini 3500GT’s, Corvette Sting Rays and even more Cobra’s and E-types on the grid.

The most powerful field to take to the track over the weekend was probably for the Whitsun Trophy, containing as it did the likes of Ford GT40’s, the Porsche 910, Lola T70’s – just standing nearby while their mechanics started them up was quite an experience.

Away from the track, Bonhams hosted the auction, and of the lots on offer, the ones I was most interested in were the superb 1956 Maserati A6G/54 2000GT Coupé by Allemanano, the 1956 Abarth 750 Spyder by the same design house, and the 1953 Cisitalia 505 DF Coupé, one of a believed two survivors out of just 10 built. The Maserati sold for well under estimate, at £483,000, while the other two failed to find a buyer. A sale rate of just 52% would seem to indicate that the higher-end classic car market is still flat.

The main off-track attraction for me is the Classic Revival Car Show, where it’s always worth spending some time and we ended our day with a stroll around the many hundreds of classics driven to the circuit by visitors. I’m always impressed by the sheer variety of classics and just how many are driven over from Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and other parts of Europe. This also means we get to see some cars that are rarely seen here – for instance, the Belgian-registered Peugeot 504 Cabriolet, and a Peugeot 203 Coupé (French plate?), and I was particularly impressed to find a Dutch-registered Mors which I assume pre-dated WW1 – that must have been quite a challenge to drive over here, especially in wet weather, as I imagine the 1912 Hispano-Suiza was too, though this was a UK car. A Swiss visitor brought a very rare Alfa Romeo 2600 saloon – I don’t think I’ve ever seen one before

It’s also interesting to see British-made classics brought over by international enthusiasts, such as the Triumph 2000 Estate and 2500 PI saloon from France (I think) and Belgium respectively and the very smart Swiss-resident Dolomite Sprint in my favourite colour for these cool sports saloons, Inca Yellow. The Austin A90 Atlantic from the Südliche Weinstraße district in Germany (the German registration system is helpfully logical!) looked very attractive in a kind of turquoise-blue.

There was a fair amount of interesting Americana on site, too, besides the usual Mustangs and Corvettes; a 1963 Rambler Ambassador 990 – believed to be the only one in the UK – looked good, as did the Dutch pair of a white Chevrolet Caprice alongside a Chrysler Town & Country.  I’ve always liked the original Ford Thunderbird, especially in a strong colour, not to forget a cool pair of muscular Pontiacs – a Parisienne and a Le Mans.

Apart from the weather, which literally cast a cloud over the morning, I had just one minor complaint – while nothing at Goodwood is cheap, the £22 event programme is very poor value, especially compared with, for example, the superb £20 programme put together for the Hampton Court Concours.

In any case, the afternoon sunshine certainly made up for the morning, and a little rain won’t stop me going back again next year and probably for some years to come. The Revival remains a unique experience, and while it’s sheer size and scope mean I’ve only scratched the surface based on a single day’s attendance, I hope I’ve been able to at least give an impression of the event – see the gallery below for more.