Recent editions changed the focus of the original event, ironically making space for a new – erhm, which is more like the old. Confused? Read this!
Going to Silverstone over the last weekend in July used to be an annual ritual for me; top-tier historic racing on the track, many thousands of classic cars around it, full access to the pits and no additional charges for grandstand seats – the Silverstone Classic was possibly the most democratic major classic event in the UK.
A few years ago it became the Silverstone Festival and moved to the last weekend of August. The event became more focused on food, fairgrounds and family-friendliness. The classic car element of the festival shrank, and I gave the last one a miss. Finally, last year, new organisers took over and brought with them another name change – it was now to be known as CarFest, “the UK’s largest family fund-raising festival”. Indeed, the word “classic” does not appear at all on the home page for CarFest. And the price… more than double the previous weekend pass.
So…the British Racing Drivers’ Club (BRDC) decided to reinstate the Silverstone Classic on a smaller scale – for this year at least – back to its previous time slot, with the emphasis firmly on historic racing and classic cars, and a ticket price just one-sixth of CarFest. Would this attempt to turn back the clock be a success? Let’s see…
I went on both Friday and Saturday with a different guest each day, taking my place with the Porsche Club among all the other car clubs in the infield and what follows is a series of impressions over two very sunny days…
First port of call was the paddocks and garages, full of wonderful historic race cars stretching from pre-WW2 through to more recent GT3 categories. One of my favourite cars was the famous – or infamous – Ferrari 250GT “Breadvan”, with it’s unique rear-end styling. It wasn’t particularly quick on the track, but still great to see and hear it. I have to say the number and level of race entries was superb, not far short of the Goodwood Revival.
It was also a thrill to see the GP Icons, including the Yardley BRM, UOP Shadow, McLaren, Williams and more. The sound these cars made as they howled along the start-finish straight was awesome. Obviously the drivers tend to be amateurs and the cars are 40 to 50 years old, but it’s interesting to note that the lap times of the leading couple of cars were almost 30 seconds slower than current F1 cars.
The area where the cars assemble before entering the track is also fun, especially once they start their engines and stream onto the circuit.
Away from the track, Iconic Auctioneers hosted two sales – one of competition cars, one of road-going classics.
Of the road cars on offer, while the “star car” was perhaps the 1994 Jaguar XJ220, sold for £506,250, somewhat more affordable were a couple of very nice early Triumph Spitfires, a very pretty and useable but unsold 1962 Lancia Flavia Vignale Convertible in red with white upholstery and some outstanding Mini’s, but the car I would have taken home if I could was the gorgeous 1960 Triumph Italia 2000 Coupé in aubergine. One of just 330 made, this Michelotti design based on the TR3 is just about the most desirable Triumph one can buy, in my eyes. Bidding dried up at £70,000 against an estimate of £80-100,000, so no sale, but this would have been the car I most would have liked to take home. Unfortunately the lighting around the car was so poor I couldn’t take a decent photo – this one is from Iconic’s website.
Still off the track, the car club area was reasonably well-populated, particularly on the Saturday, but the overall number of classics was well down on recent years, with a few major clubs absent altogether, most notably the BMW Club – it may be that this revived event will need a couple of years to build the club numbers back up to what they used to be.
Nevertheless, there were still plenty of interesting classics around, including some Italian beauties in the shapely forms of a 1972 Ferrari 365GTC/4 (which I actually prefer to the Daytona on which it was based), a 1968 Maserati Mexico as well as a dramatic – and dramatically painted – trio of De Tomaso Pantera’s, while tucked away lurking between a couple of trucks, a stunning 1967 Lamborghini 400GT 2+2 – what a motor car, my favourite Lamborghini.
If US heavy metal was more your thing, there was some of that around, too – I have a soft spot for the long, clean lines of some of the car-based US pick-up trucks such as the Chevrolet El Camino, a bright yellow ’72 Pontiac Firebird whose owner claimed to get 8-10 mpg (!), a 1972 Chevrolet Nova, a mighty ’67 Mustang Fastback and an impressive trio of muscle cars lined up together in the powerful forms of a ‘66 Oldsmobile Cutlass 442, a ‘67 Ford Fairlane and a Chevrolet Chevelle – all of these had V8’s of 4.7 litres plus.
It’s always fun to see cars from some of the many small UK manufacturers in the ‘50s and ’60s, such as the Rochdale Olympic alongside various Fairthorpes, a couple of Gilbern GT’s and a 1962 Tornado Talisman, one of only 186 built. Sometimes these specialist manufacturer cars can be quite oddly styled, but these all appeal in their own way.
I thought it was an excellent couple of days and I imagine the Sunday was as good – it seemed to be well attended and I think the BRDC and Motor Racing Legends people should be very pleased with this first revival of the original concept, and I hope they were encouraged enough to build on it. They don’t need to do anything to improve the track action, but hopefully they can attract more car clubs going forward. Many more road and track classics in the gallery below.
Such a nice selection of cars