A Gloriously Sunny Goodwood MM83

Although not quite full summer yet the old Roy Salvadori quote “Give me Goodwood on a summer’s day and you can keep the rest”  springs to mind after the 83rd Members’ Meeting, as Tony Wawryk reports:

Alongside the Revival and the Hampton Court Concours the Goodwood Members’ Meeting has been one of my favourite classic events in recent years, MM83 being my sixth in a row. Fortunately, the unpredictable English spring weather (actually, it’s unpredictable any time of year), played nice for the second consecutive year, and we enjoyed a gloriously sunny day.

My fellow enthusiast and I rolled into the car park at 7.15 on the second day – the drive to the circuit is across some very picturesque countryside. Annoyingly, I’d left it too late to book a space in the pre-1996 display area and had to park my 1972 911T (which incidentally completed the 560km round trip faultlessly) among the modern tin boxes – and after breakfast, we took a look around to see what delights we could find – and as usual there were many.

There’s less emphasis on dressing up at the MM compared to the Revival, but the overall vibe is the same – call it a historic motor racing garden party – and besides the thrills on the track (which I’m sure many of you watched on the excellent Goodwood YouTube channel – well done Jenson Button!), there were classic delights everywhere you looked.

While the Members’ Meeting restricts the number of tickets sold, making it a more comfortable experience as a visitor than the Revival, it expands the parameters for the types of cars that can compete, resulting in cars that raced both before the circuit opened in 1948, and after it closed in 1966, so spectators get to see cars over a century old go wheel-to-wheel in the S.F.Edge Trophy, contrasting with relatively modern, super-powerful sports racers from the 1970s and 1980s and ‘90s touring cars.

Watching cars and motorcycles between 30 and 120 years old being wrestled around the circuit – almost literally in the case of the older cars, with drivers leaning almost out of their seats in the manner of sidecar passengers – is to go back to when the relationship between driver and car was more direct, the sounds and smells making one forget the current global uncertainty, at least for a day. It’s interesting to note that at a time when there is worldwide concern about the price and availability of petrol and diesel, even cars this old have been adapted to run on synthetic fuels, surely part of the potential future mix of ways to power motor vehicles?

There were fabulous historic racing cars everywhere you looked. The ultimate racing car of the day for me was the superb 1965 Ferrari 250LM, followed by the Porsche 910 from 1968 and the 1953 Alfa Romeo 6C “Disco Volante”, and who doesn’t love the sound and thunder of a mighty Ford GT40? Wonderful racing cars, all.

There were celebrations of the James Hunt and Barry Sheene years, both of whom won their first – in Hunt’s case, only – world titles 50 years ago; how time flies!

Auction hosts Bonhams offered some truly gorgeous cars, with my personal favourite a coin toss between a pair of Maserati’s – a stunning 1966 Maserati Sebring in Marrone Rossiccio and the 1982 Maserati Khamsin in Rosso Rubino metallic, selling for £98,900 and £71,300 respectively including premiums, well below the mid-point of their estimates and relative bargains, I thought. I was also very taken with the one-off Jensen CV8 convertible conversion, completed last year, which achieved only £26,450 and the graceful 1939 BMW 327/328 Sport Cabriolet (a 327 with a 328 engine) that didn’t sell; indeed, only 56 of 131 cars found new owners. Some other lots can be seen in the end gallery.

Back among the racing cars, the Varzi Trophy featuring Alfa Romeo’s and Bugatti’s from the 1920’s and 30’s was a delight – again, many were 100 years old and I find it remarkable that these beautiful machines can still be raced with spirit after all this time.

As with the Revival, one of the joys of the event was to check out the great variety of classics driven to the meeting by spectators. Personal favourites included a very lovely metallic blue 1966 Ferrari 330GTC, the UK/Italian/American combination AC 428 coupé,  the Golf Yellow BMW 2002tii “roundie” which brought back happy memories of my own similar car, and I loved the charming blue Renault Caravelle, which took my imagination straight down to the Côte d’Azur, roof down, sun shining…

Saloon cars in the form of Super Touring cars from the 1990s took part in a one lap “Shoot- out” and saloons of the ‘70’s and early ‘80’s resembling cars some of us or our family members drove, competed for the Win Percy Trophy. It’s always good to see these cars being driven in anger, but the one lap shoot-out format was not particularly interesting, to me at least.

This brings me to my one complaint: The amount of track time dedicated to demonstrations and the “Shoot-out”, sometimes with only one vehicle on track at a time. These took up 90 minutes during the day and, if you include time between demonstrations etc, over two hours of racing action was lost on Sunday alone. The last race of the day finished at 18.45, and personally I would rather the amount of time dedicated to demonstrations etc be reduced and the racing brought forward.

We left the circuit late in the afternoon after another very enjoyable day at Goodwood, and yet…having attended every year for the past six years, I can’t help thinking that the event has stagnated a little, and certainly there seems to me to be a better and more varied entry at the Revival despite the more limited era the cars are selected from. If someone was to go for the first time, I would unhesitatingly recommend they should go, but maybe familiarity is beginning to reduce some of the thrill of the Members’ Meeting for me – this is purely subjective, of course, but perhaps it’s time for me to take a break from the Members’ Meeting for a year or two? Of course, I might have changed my mind in a few months!

As always, the event is far too big to cover comprehensively in 1,000 words and 100 photos, but Goodwood’s own website has many video highlights from across the weekend. Meanwhile, here’re some more photos while you maybe consider your own visit: