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52:05
Topic
Goodwood Festival of Speed
A massive annual car festival in England where famous racing drivers run historic and modern cars up a narrow hill climb track in front of huge crowds.
Car
Land Rover Series I
The very first classic Land Rover, built right after World War II as a rugged farm vehicle that could go anywhere.
Person
Charles March
The British nobleman who owns the Goodwood estate and created the famous Festival of Speed and Revival car events.
Car
McLaren MP4/13
A famous, incredibly fast Formula 1 race car from 1998 that won the world championship with driver Mika Häkkinen.
Person
Nick Heidfeld
A German Formula 1 driver who held the speed record at the Goodwood hill climb for over twenty years.
Car
McMurtry Spéirling
A tiny, incredibly fast electric car that uses powerful built-in fans to suck itself to the ground for unbelievable cornering grip.
Concept
fan car
A car that uses powerful built-in fans to suck air out from underneath itself, pulling it tight to the road so it can take corners at extreme speeds.
Person
Max Chilton
A British racing driver who broke the all-time speed record at the Goodwood hill climb in 2022.
Car
Lamborghini Diablo
A wild, wedge-shaped Italian supercar from the 1990s with a loud V12 engine and scissor doors.
Place
Molecomb
The most famous and dangerous corner on the Goodwood hill climb track, where many drivers crash because they can't see the turn until it's too late.
Car
Jaguar XJ220
A sleek, ultra-wide British supercar from the 1990s that was briefly the fastest car in the world.
Brand
Singer Vehicle Design
A highly respected company that takes classic Porsches and rebuilds them by hand with modern materials, making them incredibly beautiful and fast.
Car
Ford GT40
A famous 1960s race car built by Ford to beat Ferrari at the grueling 24 Hours of Le Mans race.
Person
Jochen Mass
A famous German racing driver who was teammates with James Hunt during his championship-winning year.
Person
Ken Miles
The brilliant driver and mechanic who helped Ford develop the GT40 race car and was famously depicted in the movie 'Ford v Ferrari'.
Car
Ferrari 312T2
The iconic red Ferrari Formula 1 car driven by Niki Lauda during his legendary 1976 rivalry with James Hunt.
Car
M23 Mclaren
The classic 1970s Formula 1 car that James Hunt drove to win his famous world championship.
Concept
Can-Am
A historic North American racing series from the 1960s and 70s with almost no rules, resulting in insanely fast and loud race cars.
Place
Goodwood Motor Circuit
A historic British race track built on an old WWII airfield that now hosts famous vintage car races.
Person
Douglas Bader
A famous British World War II fighter pilot who flew combat missions despite having artificial legs.
Person
Tony Gaze
A WWII fighter pilot and race car driver who first suggested turning the Goodwood airfield into a race track.
Place
Brooklands
The very first custom-built race track in the world, built in England in 1907 with steep banked turns.
Person
Stirling Moss
A legendary British racing driver from the 1950s and 60s who is often called the greatest driver never to win the Formula 1 world championship.
Person
Bruce McLaren
The famous racing driver and engineer from New Zealand who founded the McLaren car company and race team.
Car
McLaren M8D
An incredibly powerful, wide 1970s race car with a giant rear wing that dominated North American sports car racing.
Car
Porsche 911 GT3 RS
A special, track-ready version of the Porsche 911 with a massive rear wing and a loud, high-revving engine.
Car
Ford F-150 Lightning
The F-150 Lightning is a large pickup truck made by Ford that runs entirely on battery power instead of gasoline. It looks very similar to a standard truck but features a large storage space under the hood where a traditional engine would normally sit. It is designed for everyday driving, towing, and hauling without producing tailpipe emissions.
Car
Alpine A110
A modern, lightweight French sports car designed to be incredibly fun and agile on twisty roads.
Car
MG Cyberster
A modern, fully electric convertible sports car with cool doors that open upwards, built by MG.
Car
Alpine A290
A sporty, fully electric hatchback from France designed to be fast and fun to drive around town.
Car
Porsche Taycan Turbo S
A incredibly fast, luxury electric sedan built by Porsche that accelerates as fast as a supercar.
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Welcome back to the Intercooler podcast, everybody, episode 320 of the Intercooler podcast.
That's the podcast powered by car finance specialist JBR Capital, Dan Proser and Andrew
Frankel with you here.
Andrew, at the end of this week is the British Grand Prix, which marks the start of the sort
of unofficial UK car week.
Because from the British Grand Prix, we then move on to the Goodwood Festival of Speed.
It's busy a few days, isn't it, for car people in this country?
It certainly is.
And what do we think is going to happen?
I know you think Lewis will win it.
Well, I hope so.
I don't think he will, but I hope so.
I think it's all a bit, I think it's all, all quite close at the front
now, isn't it?
I don't know if you watched or heard about the Austrian Grand Prix yesterday.
But it was an interesting race, certainly one of the more interesting races that we've
had.
And, you know, early on it looked like the Ferraris were competitive, but it seemed their
qualifying form was not matched over sort of long distance race pace.
George Russell seemed perpetually under threat from Max, but managed to hold off for his
first win since the start of the season.
And Kimmy wasn't really able to get on terms with it.
It's shaping up to be quite interesting.
There was also some good racing yesterday.
There was.
Yeah, there was definitely some good racing.
So, and you always get good racing at Silverstone.
And you often get unpredictable weather as well.
So I for one will be, or whatever you may or may not think about the same formula one
at the moment, that is the one race of the season, or that on Spar, I guess, to which
you can guarantee I will be glued.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's odd.
The performance of, well, some of the cars seems to flip flop quite a lot based on the
circuit and the conditions, doesn't it?
You know, the Ferrari was mega quick last time out in Barcelona, where Hamilton won.
And then on race pace, just not there yesterday, both of them.
So it's strange.
It makes it kind of hard to predict who's going to be fighting for the win other than
the Mercedes are always there, aren't they?
Well, exactly.
Yeah.
So I think, you know, once they go on top of their reliability issues, which they seem
to be doing, they still must be one of my favourites of both championships, I would say.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
We're not really doing F1 this week, are we?
We're doing Goodwood, particularly the Festival of Speed, which has, so it is next
weekend, the weekend after the one coming, and it's become a highlight of the motoring
calendar, not just in the UK, though, has it?
I mean, I think, you know, right across the world, people are paying attention to what's
going on at the Festival of Speed, the new car launches, the superstars that turn up.
It's also certainly the UK's most important and biggest car show these days.
I want to, through this episode, try and understand how it got that way.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, it's kind of like the sort of series one Land Rover of events insofar is,
it was conceived as a stopgap.
That's what it was designed to do.
So to then Earl of March, now Duke of Richmond, Charles March, his dream was always to bring
motor racing back to the circuit.
But that would require a huge amount of changes to the circuit, rebuilding of bits of it,
planning and so on.
And that was going to be a multi-year project.
But in the meantime, he wanted to get people used to the idea of motorsport returning
to Goodwood and to sort of bed in various concepts.
And there had been the odd, very informal hill climb up the drive to Goodwood House
in the past.
So he just thought in 1993, without really any thought as to whether it would become
an ongoing thing, I'll just have this hill climb.
It's not motor racing as such.
It's certainly not circuit racing, but it's something and you can do it and it's on site.
And that was the Festival of Speed in 1993.
And it was conceived absolutely as just something to do to reintroduce the idea of motorsports
at Goodwood, of which there had been precisely none since 1966, as a sort of spoiler for
the ultimate aim, which was to get racing back to the circuit, which was finally achieved
in 1998.
So I read somewhere that for the first Festival of Speed, you were there.
But I read that they were expecting a couple of thousand people to turn up.
And in the end, it was 25,000 people.
Yeah.
Well, they don't know.
I've spoken to the Duke about this.
To this day, he does not know nor will he ever know how many people turned up to that
event because they were completely swamped.
They had no ability to measure the numbers of people even coming through the front door,
let alone those jumping over the fence.
So it was, I mean, just massively bigger than they ever imagined it was going to be.
But how much massively bigger, no one will ever know.
But it was more than enough for him to think, oh, we may be onto something here.
And to decide to have another go the following year.
I didn't even think that was at that stage.
He decided in 1993, well, this is going to be something which is going to last for where
are we now?
33 years it's been going on.
Yeah.
I mean, how old were you in 1993?
I turned seven years.
Yeah.
So it is extraordinary how long it's been.
It's been going on for.
And testament to the Duke and his team's ability to always find something new to bring.
And the idea of we now call it the moving motor show.
Yeah.
Back then it was just I think the idea was that they just get as many different cars
to go up the hill, different types of cars to go up the hill as possible.
So they had some Formula One cars, they had some really old stuff, they had some sports
cars, they had some super cars.
And from that grew this idea that actually you could have a motor show, but instead of
it just being cars parked on stands, you could actually see them doing what they were
designed to do, going fast up hills.
And from the very earliest day, the actual is the road car section, the super car paddock
as they call them, plus all the sort of new tech things they do these days, which are
one of the most popular components of the of the Festival of Speed.
And I just love the fact that all of this grew from one very pure, simple idea, which
is to get motorsport back to Goodwood.
And the result is now it's a very different sort of motor show.
But it is one of the most highly regarded.
You only have to look at the manufacturers that bring all new stuff to that event.
I mean, it's particularly the super cars.
If you've got a new super car knocking about, you have to be at Goodwood.
You only have to look at the know, I don't know how many FF1 teams are going this year,
but usually out of the 10 F1 teams, usually, you know, 67 or eight of them turn up.
And they don't do that for no reason at all.
And you look at the names, people who get to go there.
There is genuinely nothing like it anywhere in the world.
And it's great, isn't it?
That it all just happens in a sleepy little corner of West Sussex.
Yeah. And the hill climb, particularly the competitive hill climb is really the centerpiece.
Or it's the bit that I get excited about anyway, because you really do have a huge
variety of cars and other stuff, actually, going absolutely as fast and as hard as they
possibly can up what is actually quite a challenging bit of road.
So it's a real spectacle.
And for the longest time, more than 20 years, the hill climb record was held by Nick
Heidfeld in a McLaren MP413.
I think it was a Meeker Hakenan championship winning car.
He set that time, that 41.6 second time in, it was 1999, wasn't it?
And it stood until 2022, when Max Jilton beat it in that extraordinary
McMurtry Speeling, the little electric fan car.
Was that already four years ago?
And he went, yeah.
And he went a couple of seconds quicker.
But it's, I think the thing about the hill climb is that you're
guaranteed to see some sort of action.
It might be an extraordinary display of commitment and car control.
It might well be a crash.
Someone's going to hit a straw bale at some point, I know.
But they are, yeah.
I mean, you know, it's happened to lots of people, hasn't it?
Lots of famous people, lots of really, you know, good drivers.
You know, Andy Wallace, Chris High and so on.
So Jonathan Palmer, lots of people have been stuff at the, at the Festival of Speed.
I haven't managed it yet.
I've come quite close.
I can remember, this is terrible.
I was, I don't know how many years ago this was, but I was in a Lamborghini.
I think I was in a Diablo in the supercar run.
And my, in fact, I think she was my girlfriend then.
So it must have been one of the really early ones, we got married in 1995.
And she was, I knew she was standing.
She's now my wife at the first corner.
So I just thought I would, I think the phrase is give it large.
So I just gave it this preposterous bong at the first corner.
It probably looked quite good from the outside.
It probably looked like the ridiculous skid that resulted.
It was all nicely planned and, and I didn't even leave the track.
Let alone spin it, let alone stick it in the hay bales.
But I was, it's one of those things where you, you, you're just
trying to do a sort of a little gesture and you end up being
about as busy as you'd ever want to be.
I think that's the closest I've ever come to, to binning it on that hill.
And I've, I've been up there a few times over the years.
I think it was Tony Drone who told me you are, you are there always
on the wrong side of the risk to reward ratio and that the only one
anybody will ever remember is the one in which you go off.
So I think the sort of the accepted etiquette now,
unless you're trying to set a time, which is a completely different thing.
And I stopped doing that long ago, is to make a lot of noise
and see how sideways you can go off the start line and then just,
you know, go up the hill fast, but as defensively as you possibly can,
because it really is, it really is a place where you can,
you can come to grief.
I mean, the famous corner is Morkham.
Yeah.
And, you know, as they say in all the briefings, if you wait
until you can see the corner before you break, you have crashed.
Yeah.
That's what happens.
Yeah.
So that's what happens.
People go to the Browler Hill and they suddenly, oh, shit.
And that's it.
And they're off.
And, you know, some, there have been some big accidents there.
A, an XJ220 once went through an awful lot of hay bales,
which had been at the time about, well, not that much longer before being,
one of those bales had been stood on by half the auto car editorial team.
They shouldn't have been there.
And they just got sold a shoot away.
And then it actually, it went through them.
But again, that was also back in the very, very early days.
And security is somewhat tight now than it was then.
So, yeah, so, so we talk a bit about this year's Festival of Speed.
I had a look just before I came on.
General admission tickets, I think you can only get them for 30,000.
But they're going to be on Thursday now.
But Thursday is actually a really good day to go.
Because it tends to be one of the quieter days.
And everything that is going to go up on Friday, Saturday or Sunday goes up anyway.
It's as good as any other day to be there.
And it's got the particular advantages this year of being the only day where you
can actually go and buy yourself an entry ticket.
Singer have the big central display this year.
Yeah.
That's a big step up and forward for them, isn't it?
Absolutely.
Yeah, I mean, I was I was amazed when I heard the news a little while ago.
It's a huge sort of feather in their cap, isn't it, to be celebrated that way at that event.
I mean, you think of some of the other central displays over the years.
Oh, yeah, all the major manufacturers.
I mean, to be to be clear, it is a commercial transaction.
You know, good would do it out of the kinds of their hearts.
It is, you know, singer will be poneying up big time for the privilege of being able to do that.
But it does speak a lot as to the singer have been at the festival of speed for years and years.
And clearly, it's been a very successful for them.
And they've obviously just thought to themselves, right, well, this is where we need to be.
And this is where we need to be making our biggest possible noise.
And it speaks volumes for for the profile of the event, for the kind of people who go there
and for singer themselves that they are now.
As I said, that big central display, which is always designed by Jerry Judah.
Yeah, I think he's done all of them.
And I don't think it's been on has it been unveiled?
I think it has.
I haven't seen it see what they're going to come up with this year.
Yeah. And I know.
I know what I'll be going to form.
Yeah, I know what cars are going to form a big part of singers display this year.
Because my wife is tearing her hair out at the moment, trying to get them ready for the show.
They are I actually can't say anything about your wife.
Not your wife being.
Your wife, your wife being a singer employee.
She is exactly right.
And I'm excited to see the response.
That's what I'm going to say.
So yeah, singer will be that I read that more than 200,000 people are expected to attend over the four days.
Yeah, sounds about right.
And given that they were expecting a couple of thousand first time out in 1993.
I mean, it just shows how much it's great.
And it's a monster, isn't it?
You know, it's a huge event when you're just sort of approaching it by car,
because you see all this traffic management from a good few miles out.
You see the queues, if you can avoid the queues, absolutely do.
You just get a sense of the scale of the thing.
It's a bit like going to Glastonbury Festival.
You just this enormous sort of temporary town just opens out before you
and you realize something special is going on.
The theme for this year is the rivals epic racing jewels.
And that theme centers on two anniversaries, the
the sixth anniversary of Ford versus Ferrari.
Le Mans, Cladie of 1966,
which is the first year that Ford actually won, wasn't it?
The first four.
Yes, at the to be clear, at the third time of asking,
you know, Ford raced Ferrari at Le Mans in 1964 with the GT40.
They all break.
Ford raced Ferrari at Le Mans in 1965 with the GT40.
They all break.
Ford raced Ferrari at Le Mans in 1966.
And finally, yeah, then they won.
Of course, that's the one that everybody focuses on.
Even though the 1965 race was a much more interesting race,
but we won't dwell on that now.
The other anniversary then that's being celebrated over the weekend
is 50 years of Hunt versus Lauda.
That 1976 F1 championship battle.
So.
Strong theme, I reckon.
It's a complete slam dunk, isn't it?
Not this because there are those two films,
Rush and, well, Le Mans, 66 or Ford versus Ferrari,
depending on which country you are watching the form.
And it's interesting that I mean, both of them.
I mean, I enjoyed both films,
but both are somewhat fictionalized.
There are things in both films, which, if you know anything about
either Le Mans, 66 or the 1976 Formula One season,
you'll be looking at and gay.
Huh?
And some really pretty fundamental things
in the Hunt, Lauda movie, Rush,
the fact that they were deadly enemies, they weren't.
They were good buddies.
The fact that James was this complete
hooligan, lunatic
during the season.
He wasn't at all.
I can remember speaking to me.
Yocamass was a friend of mine, who was his teammate, and he'd know
and he'd say that, you know, I've said this on the podcast before,
he'd say that James was during the season.
He said, I can't say what he did in the offseason.
Maybe he was like that.
But during the season, the man was a complete professional.
And he made the very good point.
He said, because frankly, if you weren't, you'd probably die.
Yeah.
So, you know, that was, I don't know.
It just it's like Bohemian Rhapsody, the film that Queen made about Freddie Mercury,
which was also had bits in it, which were simply not true to.
Well, to what actually happened.
And you're thinking, actually, you know, that blokes life or, you know,
the 1976 Formula One season, they were both so interesting
and exciting, fascinating, very different reasons.
Why do you feel the need to in any way
vary from the truth just to sort of sexy it up a bit more?
And I think it's maybe I'm just taking myself privately seriously here.
I've always just thought it's a bit disrespectful to the characters
involved, all of whom, you know, Hunt, Lourdes, Freddie Mercury are no longer here
to say otherwise.
Oh, sorry, I've rapped it on a bit.
So and the more 66, well, I've spoken at length on this podcast before
about the I mean, just all the stunning, frankly, blatant lies that were told
in that film about about what actually happened.
So I went I went to about on that.
But I think they'll be an awful lot of people listening to this and we're just
thinking, Frank, you'll get over yourself.
They just feature films that's just entertainment.
But it's great for Goodwood because, you know, those two events, the 76 F1 season
and the 66 LeMaure could not be more front and centre in people's minds.
And, you know, they're going to have things like all three GT 40s that
form that extraordinary sort of finish line photo opportunity will be there.
First time they've been together for at least a decade anywhere in the world.
These are not everyday common garden GT 40s.
These are sort of like seven litre GT 40 prototypes.
And it's not.
It will not have been the matter of a moment to have got them all together.
And it's fantastic that they're going to be there.
I guess the P form P 34 Ferraris will be there too.
So it will be an amazing spectacle.
I hope they get the GT 40s to go up the hill together in sort of arrow formation.
But this time with Ken Miles's car at the front, because.
Well, there is an argument.
There is an argument.
It's nothing like a slam dunk.
I mean, the film suggests that Ken Miles had LeMaure robbed from him.
The truth is nothing like a simple as that.
But I think it would be a I think it would be a nice capped off to this late
and very, very great and highly underrated driver to have the three GT 40s
going up in arrow formation.
But with Ken Miles's car at the front.
Just say it.
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That's the power of good, but isn't it to get those three cars together for a
demonstration?
Unbelievable.
Yeah.
And I presume the.
Hunts M23 McLaren and loud as 312.
What would it have been a T2?
Yeah, it would have been a T2.
We'll be there too.
I'd love to see those cars going up together because that's what you want.
You want to see the two cars together.
Now, I don't think they'd be allowed to go.
I don't think they'd be allowed to get up together fast because that would
be appeared to be, I suspect one of the rules of the Festival of Speed,
which is why it's allowed to happen, is that it's runs on the hill climb rules,
which is that it's always one car at a time.
And if two cars go together, then they can't go fast.
But just to see those two cars together again would be fantastic.
Yeah.
And I think, I think Damon Hill is going to be there with his championship winning
car 30 years after he won the title.
Yeah, well, it's 30 years of that.
Yeah, absolutely.
And lots of American anniversary.
It's 110 years of Indy car, 60 years of Can-Am.
I think it's 60 years of Trans-Am as well.
And that's the thing about Google, isn't it?
It's it's kind of like whatever you'll feel you're interested in,
whether it's really old stuff or American stuff or European stuff or sports cars
or Formula One or rally cars.
No one who has any entry or road cars, no one who has any interest in any form
of cars motoring, motorsport is going to go to Goobard and come away
thinking, well, there's nothing of me there.
Yeah.
So I just wonder how you feel it's changed over the years.
I mean, clearly grown massively in scale, but has anything been lost
from those early runnings of the event?
Yeah, I think it's absolutely inevitable, isn't it?
You can't have, let's say, I don't know, 10,000 people turned up to that first one.
And now, well, even if you call it 200,000 across four days,
that's still 50,000 a day.
I mean, that is a completely different magnitude of event.
And also, you know, clearly all the car manufacturers are piled in.
You see some of the structures that they get built, these massive three-storey
buildings, which look like they should be, you know, in the city of London.
So, yes, I think the sort of the garden party charm of it
was never going to survive that.
But at the same time, the reason that's gone is because it's just providing
more and more stuff for people to go and enjoy.
So the character has changed.
I mean, the very first one was, you know, the central display was a DB7 and a box.
The big party on Saturday night, I mean, it was, I think we just sort of queued
up the sandwiches of the cantina or something.
And, you know, obviously, you know, safety standards, thank you.
Goodness have been totally transformed.
I mean, that first festival was a...
Yeah, it was sketchy.
I think there are bits of it where all there was between the car and track
was just like a sort of a liner tape or something.
Yeah.
And there were a few hay bales scattered about.
But now it is, OK, it's still done traditionally.
It's still done with hay bales, which are actually very effective forms
of slowing cars down in a progressive way.
But, yeah, I think it's a being of, I shouldn't say this because I don't want
to jinx it, but I think it's a long time since you even the lots of cars get
crashed and lots of cars get badly damaged.
But I think it's been a long time since anyone's been badly hurt there,
which is a testament to, you know, the massive progress that's been made.
And you can't make that kind of progress and do that very important work without
at the same time taking away something of that, as I say, garden party atmosphere.
So it's a trade off.
But if you think.
Particularly if you take a sort of slightly wider view of it, what's the
commercial success of Goodewood in all its forms has done for the local community.
Yeah.
Employment in the area, the money it has brought into that part of the world.
You can't sit on your high horse and, you know,
lament the fact that it's not all just sort of, you know, strawberries and cream
for, you know, what are they called?
Say, Brooklyn's the right crowd and no crowding.
The fact that it has become popular and the fact that anybody who goes there,
you know, regardless of who they are, where they're from or what their
interests are, is going to feel included and welcome is.
To me, an entirely positive thing.
So, you know, all power to them.
Um, let's think about Goodewood more broadly, because it's a huge estate.
The race track is right there.
Um, and away from cars, there's the, the horse racing track as well at the top of
the hill.
Um, there are other events.
There's Good Woof.
Isn't there?
The, the big.
I'm not sure I'm still going, is it?
Okay.
Uh, I think that, I don't, well, oh, so the terrible thing is that I certainly haven't
been invited to it for a bit, which doesn't necessarily mean anything.
Um, maybe it is still okay, but I just haven't heard talk of you.
Good.
But if it does have to happen, forgive me.
I just haven't heard of it for a bit.
Um, but yeah, you're right.
It's a massive, you know, I can't remember how many acres they've got, but it's
certainly got, the numbers got five figures in it.
Whoa.
It's big.
And if you think about the value of that, that amount of real estate in that
part of the world, I mean, it is fairly eye watering.
Yeah.
Um, but, um, obviously the whole thing, the development, um,
that has taken place since 1993 was designed to get racing back to the motor
circuit.
Um, and that's kind of like the revival to me is, I mean, the, the
festival of speed is fabulous because you can see cars from all eras, um, and
road cars and for people who just love cars quite generally, it's far and away
the best place to be.
Um, but if you are an historic motorsport nut, as I am, the revival
is someone else always has been.
Um, God, next year will be the 30th revival.
Yeah.
It started in 1998.
So 2027 will be the 30th running of the, did they run it in COVID?
Did they miss one?
No, they did that speed week, didn't they?
That's right.
That's right.
Of course they did.
Um, and that all started because, um, Goodwood was, or what is now the Goodwood
Motor Circuit was a, an RAF based during the war as a satellite, um, to the main
Tangmere station.
Um, they had all sorts of aircraft there, but mainly Spitfires, I think it is famously
where the, um, legendary legless pilot, Douglas Barber, um, took off from on his
last flight where he got shot down and ultimately ended up in Colvitz Castle.
Uh, it has that, and there is a statue of, of Barber, um, on the premises today.
And anyone who goes to the members meeting or the revival just goes to
Goodwood for a track, they can go and, uh, can have a look at old Duggy there.
He wasn't, despite the portrayal of him in films like Reach for the Sky, he wasn't
a particularly nice person.
Um, there is, there, there was a great quote.
Um, it might have been his batman or somebody upon, you know, they all ended
up in Colvitz, which got liberated in 1945, I think by the Russians.
Um, and someone who'd been there was interviewed and was asked what the best
thing about being liberated from Colvitz was.
And he said, never having to see Douglas Barber again.
Although he might not, he might not have put it that politely, but anyway, so that's a
little, that's my little bit of Douglas Barber trivia.
Um, but it was, it was actually a bloke called Tony Gays, who was an RAF pilot during the wall.
Um, and he was a big car fan.
And he, I think he and a few of his mates used to just race around the
perimeter circuit probably during the war.
Um, and then one day he was somewhere, I think he was in a car dealership somewhere.
And the then Duke of Richmond, um, Freddie Richmond, who is the current Duke's grandfather
was in there too.
And I think talk came to the business of, you know, motor racing returning to
Britain after the war.
Brooklands was gone because it had been torn up by, um, military buildings and that sort of
thing. I don't think it had been bombed, but the end, good, good, Brooklyn square, you know,
which had been the home of British motor racing since it first opened this door since 1909,
um, was not usable.
Um, and there was this little general discussion and Freddie Richmond was saying,
oh, wouldn't it be wonderful if there's someone we race cars again?
I think Tony Gays turned random and said, well, you got somewhere.
You've got the perfect place.
You already own it.
It's just down the road from your house.
Uh, and I think, um, the Duke just suddenly went, actually, I remember the quote.
It was something like, something like that, goodness me.
Um, that's an interesting idea, but the quote is, but what will the neighbors say?
Um, and there's anybody knows Goodwood knows, um, you know, neighbors have been,
have been complaining about noise at Goodwood, you know, from that moment to this.
And so that was, um, that was the start of it.
And in, uh, 1948, um, the circuit opened, they really didn't know how many people would turn up.
And they just had a small series of races and it took off.
It was, I guess it was similar to what happened at the Festival of Speed in 1993.
They just got thousands more people than they'd ever anticipated.
And then, you know, Goodwood went through this amazing year.
It was only 18 years long.
So they've already been racing.
Let me just get this right.
1998 to 2026 is 30th.
So I think they've already been racing at Goodwood at the revival for twice as long as cars ever raced
in period.
That.
Oh, wow.
Um, yeah.
So 1948, no, the first one was in 1948.
The last one was 1966.
Um, but you know, they went into that thing with sort of pre-war cars like, you know,
ERAs and that sort of thing.
And they came out of it with, you know, Jackie Stewart and Jim Clark racing the very latest
state of the art Formula One cars around there.
Um, and it was stopped because the Duke quite rightly thought it was all just getting a bit too
sketchy.
It was just getting too fast.
And, you know, he didn't want there to be a calamity there.
I mean, they took it so seriously.
I can remember talking to Jackie Stewart about this, that they go down there and
they test and test and test.
And they would gear the car, they would gear top gear according to the direction and speed
of the wind on the Lavant Strait.
Yeah.
So that's how finally they were tuning the cars, which is pretty extraordinary.
And in between those two, um, bookends, if you like, some amazing things happened.
You know, they had the nine hour races in the early 1950s, which were
extraordinary events in their own right.
The first time that long distance racing had returned to the UK, I think since probably
the death of the double 12 races at Brooklands.
It was a good word.
Let us not forget that Aston Martin won its, you know, one and only World Championship.
They became the sports car World Champions in 1959.
In a championship, they'd never intended to, to enter.
Um, they wanted more than anything else to win Le Mans.
And they decided not to enter any other rounds of the World Sports Car Championship.
Um, and they were only going to do Le Mans, but Sterling begged them to let him take a car
to the Nürburgring to the 1000 Ks, because he just really wanted to do it.
Um, and I think Sterling actually paid, um, on the basis that if he won it, he
win it back in prize money.
And he went out there with a bloke called, I think it was Jack Fairman and won it.
And then they went to Le Mans and won it.
Um, and suddenly found themselves in a situation that,
Blimey, if we can just win the TT at Goodwood, we could probably be World Champions.
And that's the famous race where, um, the pit caught fire.
And it looked like Sterling, um, Moss was out of the race.
Um, because the car he was sharing with us at Roy Salvedore had gone up in flames.
And there wasn't even a pit for them to operate out of, but there was a private
pit for Aston further down the grid and they hiked him out of his pit,
put Sterling in, I think Carol Shelby's car, um, which wasn't doing very well.
It was third or fourth at the time.
Toll Sterling to go and do his thing.
Sterling went and did his thing, won the race by Mars and the World Sports Car
Championship was Aston Martin's.
I mean, it really is fairy tale stuff.
Um, couldn't make it up.
That's great.
And that all happened at Goodwood.
It's also obviously where, you know, Sterling had his career ending accident, um,
in 1962.
So it wasn't all good.
So where Bruce McLaren lost his life?
Well, that was after racing stopped there.
Yeah.
So it is where Bruce McLaren, uh, in 1970 testing the M8D, um, McLaren Cam-Am car.
I mean, those things were, I mean, blimey.
Those McLarens in 1970, so 40, no, goodness, 56 years ago,
well over half a century ago, they were going around Goodwood in just over a minute.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, if you went down there with a road car, a really fast road car, a supercar, you know,
a 911 GT, what would a 911 GT3 RS do around there with a really good driver who was,
who'd taken some brave pills?
124, 125 maybe, something like that?
Oh, wow.
An over half a century ago, there was this kind of McLaren's going around in just over a minute.
I mean, it is just unimaginable how fast these things were going.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cars were no downforce at all, um, banging around there in those sorts of times.
And then Goodwood sort of had its wilderness years, um, testing dwindled there.
It was always somewhere which people could just go and unload a car if they were shaking it down,
test it and make sure that it was all all right.
There is this story about Stefanie Hansen going there, I think in an Onyx.
And I think I'm officially going under a minute in a, you know, and that was literally just a,
you know, I'd get the car off the truck, you know, take, just do a couple of laps and make
sure it was all pointing in the right direction and then we'll go off to whichever race in Europe
they're going to do.
I think is what happened.
Um, and, and, and all that just sort of, you know, shakedown.
He went under a minute.
So I mean, what would a modern Formula One, if you put Lewis and his Ferrari around there
and they set it up properly for the circuit.
What would it do?
I mean,
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There's probably some, you could probably ask AI to calculate it.
You know, look at all the lap times from all the circuits, then put all the data from Goodwood
in and get it to come up with an approximate lap time.
Someone will have done it.
Someone will know what a modern formula one car fully lit would do around there.
Or someone's probably done it on a good racing sim, haven't they?
Yeah, probably.
Yeah.
It would be lightning.
It would be fantastic to watch.
It's just, it's never going to happen, is it?
But goodness me, if they could, the car world would stand still waiting to see what happened.
I think it's, I mean, it would be the ultimate thing at Lewis Hamilton in a Scarlet Ferrari
seeing how fast he could drive around Goodwood.
I mean, to drive, it might be, I mean, not boring, but so much of it would just be flat.
So much would just be flat.
I mean, you come out the pits, so you come out the chicane, and then you get your clog down.
And I reckon you'd be more than halfway around the lap before you touch the brakes.
I think you'd be going into the left at St Mary's.
It would be absolutely ridiculous.
I'd love to see that.
Yeah, I'd love it.
One of the things I'm looking forward to at Goodwood this year is seeing the new Alpine A110.
It is apparently going to make its public debut at the Festival of Speed,
and this is the electric one.
And as we understand it, the core structure of the car is basically sort of derived from the
existing one.
So it's not exactly a clean sheet car, which kind of leaves the door open a little bit.
We hope, and according to rumors and reports, for there to be a petrol-powered version of
the new A110 at some point.
But as we understand it, this, the car that's going to be shown at Goodwood is pure EV.
And we've spoken at length, haven't we, about the problem with EV sports cars in the here and now.
Is that just a sort of side note for you, or are you looking forward to seeing that thing?
Fascinated.
Yeah.
Fascinated.
I mean, I don't think I'd be very good at my job if I said I wasn't very interested in the A110.
Yeah, I mean, I want to know every single thing about it.
I want to drive it.
Yeah, I, and I don't know.
As part of me, which thinks we know how hard the, well, the A110 that's about to go or sail,
how hard that found finding a place in the market.
And it is just looking at it purely objectively.
It is very hard to see how an electric one, however capable it is, whatever
synthesized noise it might make, noises it might make.
It's really hard to see how that's going to capture the hearts and minds of the public.
But you must never prejudge these things.
We will see.
And I hope that it's beautiful and I hope that it's light and I hope that it's,
yeah, I hope that they find a way.
I mean, I was going to say on the podcast, in the week I saw my first MG Cybuster on the road.
Oh, I saw one last week as well.
It might have been the same one.
Who knows?
I was in Pembrokeshire, so maybe not.
Oh, okay, fair enough.
Well, gosh, okay.
But that is the first one I've seen.
Yeah, same.
Yeah.
So now I will definitely go and have a look at, sadly this year because of various other
work related things going on, I can only make it there on the Sunday, which is why I'm not
driving anything or having anything else going on there, sadly.
But I would know.
It was one of the first things I'll do if it is there and it has been unveiled.
I'll go and take a look.
So talking of A110s, I saw a couple of days ago that my old A110 was a very, very, very
old.
I saw a couple of days ago that my old A110 is back up for sale.
I saw it on AutoTrader.
It's now almost seven years old.
It's done 44,000 miles.
So it's lived a bit of a life.
I sold it with 17,000 miles after three years.
So it's still doing well.
Worryingly, it's up for only £1,000 less than I sold it for four years ago.
Goodness me.
It is price-tie though.
It is price-tie.
I'll be amazed if it goes for what it's listed as, £38,000 if anyone wants to go and hunt it down.
So what would you say is, let's say you're someone who just always liked the idea of an A110,
couldn't quite raise the steam at the time, but the itch hasn't quite gone away.
And is thinking to themselves whether there's going to be a new electric one, so that's
probably going to bump up the values of the old one.
Better get in quick now.
So a quite leggy example like your one, what do you think is a fair price for that?
33, 34?
I think 35.
Looking at what else is out there, I think 35 is reasonable.
Maybe 36.
38 is too strong, but I think 35 would be reasonable.
What would you pay for a two-year-old car which had only done 5,000 miles?
Much closer to 50.
I don't know if there's something in my head I'd have to go and look, but a lot more.
But I think that if you weren't going to put a load of miles on it, I think that could be a,
I mean you'd just lose so little on it, wouldn't you?
Yeah, you would.
Get the right spec, get the one that everybody wants and you could get advice on that,
but I would just go for a pure and I'd probably go for just the traditional blue,
although I did like the grey that yours was, but I wouldn't go for a wacky colour.
Did you get me yellow now and all sorts of things on here?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And yeah, I mean, don't not use it, but if you sparingly, so the miles don't pack up,
I think that we can always be very careful when you're making these sorts of suggestions,
because people could always come back and go, you told me, and I'm not saying that at all, but
were I wanting a recreational toy, which I wasn't going to do massive miles in,
but I didn't want to lose my shirt on, and that might be quite an interesting way to go.
Well, if it does sell for, call it 35,000, it's lost only £1,000 a year since I sold it,
which is remarkable really for a car that's a 2019 car.
Yeah, exactly. And you think it's a seven-year-old car, which is done, well, 44,000 miles now,
and there must be a few of those knocking, but you don't hear stories about, oh yeah,
but the wheels fall off at 35, or you don't hear horror stories. I mean, they're very simple cars
with very tried and proven mechanicals. Also, they're very light, so they're not going to
be putting a lot of strain on their components. You just don't hear stories about unreliability
or anything else. I think, yeah, I'd really like to. I'm not going to.
I'd love to. I wish I could. can't at the moment.
But the person who bought it off, the guy that I sold it to, was good enough to message me to say,
I've got it. So I knew where the car was. And I just really hope that whoever buys it now,
or if you buy it, or if you know the person who does, please get in touch with me, because I just
want to kind of keep track of that car. I want to know where it is at all times if I can,
because I'd love to have it back at some point. I can't do it yet.
Do you think the reason it seems so expensive, because it's being marketed as the X-DAM
Proceure A110? It's definitely not. And I read the advert, actually. The advert doesn't say a lot.
It certainly doesn't mention me, nor should it. But it's... I bloody would. Seriously, I would.
Well, because it's part of the history. It's an interesting part of the history. It marks it out
as being something different. There are all sorts of stories that you could refer prospective customers
to. There's no evidence that you thrashed it or did anything to abuse it. It's a famous car.
It's probably, well, it will be one of the best known A110s in the country. I'd absolutely make
the most of that, but each of their own. Well, yeah. And it's got a cool history as well. You've
driven it. Chris Harris has driven it. Karun Chandok has driven it. Quite a few people.
It's been looked after, but it's lived an interesting life that car.
Yeah. So the last thing that I want to talk about this week is still Alpine themed, because the
A290 that I've been living with for six months, it goes back more or less as soon as we end this
podcast recording. Oh, yeah. It's a disaster. I know. Yeah. No, I will be very sorry to see it go.
Actually, what I wanted to just talk about briefly was the fleet that I've had this year,
because I've been running the A290 and an Audi S5 Avant. And for someone in my
situation, a car lover with young kids, it has been such a great car combo, such a great two car
fleet for us, because they're both interesting cars, both really, really good cars, but very
different. And so we cover so many bases between those two. You know, the, my driveway at home is
a bit awkward. It's a tandem driveway. So it's two cars, but you park one behind the other. So the
car at the back is stuck until you move the one at the front. And if, well, we often found ourselves
with the Audi at the front, the Alpine at the back, and we just wanted to do a short local journey.
And it was irritating, because I, for those journeys, I always wanted to be in the Alpine
always, always. Of course. And I'd sort of resent in a weird way having to use the Audi for those
local journeys, because the Alpine is just so well suited to that stuff, a little EV. That's
what they're good at. Yeah, but, but it's, it's interesting, isn't it, the way the, the Audi
facilitates the, the Alpine, because without the Audi, the Alpine would make no sense to you at all.
Well, well, A, A that, and B, if you didn't have off street parking and private charging,
there's no way you did either. So it's, yeah, it's a really harmonious.
It is, it is harmonious. I think one point that I will make though, so they're both
sporting cars, right? Both performance cars of very different flavours. What I've realised is that
I don't need both of my cars at home, the sort of, you know, our, let's call them everyday cars.
I don't need both of them to be performance cars. I think one of the two being a performance car
is enough. And not that I, not that I dislike both being performance cars, but if it were,
if they were, if it was my money, cars that I owned myself, I don't need both of them to be
quick drivers cars. The reason being that there are inevitably compromises in choosing
a performance car of any kind over an equivalent normal car, if we want to phrase it that way,
you know, they, it might be a compromise to do with comfort or refinement or buying costs or
running costs or whatever. I think what I've realised is that sometimes you just want the right car
for the job. And sometimes that job is just a long motorway drive or collecting the kids from
nursery or something. And so I, if it were me and I were, and it was my money and I was choosing
from scratch, I think I'd have just one of those cars. I don't know which one actually,
would be just an ordinary, normal, common or garden car.
Yeah, so it's what, it's what we have, because I'm older than you, we figured this out a long
time ago, which is why the problem with having a performance car as your everyday knockabout car is,
A, all the compromises you talk about, but also there is this sort of sense that you're wasting
the car. And also there's a kind of like pressure you think to yourself, oh, for goodness sake,
what have I got this thing on a unit? And suddenly sometimes you find yourself thinking, oh, well,
maybe I ought to go take it out for a drive or drive faster than I would do otherwise. So we have
a 1.5 liter Golf, which is, which, you know, which car you know, well, we've been here for the best
part of 10 years. I've noticed I drive it fast at all. It's a really lovely, quiet, refined,
comfortable car with no sporting pretensions whatsoever. And it is the perfect knockabout car.
And that and something sporting for longer distances or when you're on your own is to me
the perfect combination. That is the way to go. You actually want a car for, you know, doing the
school run, going to the supermarket, whatever. To me, I think the fact it's sporting is actively
a point against it. You want a car which makes you not want to drive fast at all and just use as
transport. I agree. Final thing on the A290 before we wrap up, the one of the most striking things
about running that car is how its efficiency varies through the season. So in winter, it will,
the car that I've got here would not do more than two miles per kilowatt hour. I think it was actually
averaging 1.9 miles per kilowatt hour. That's terrible. Which is awful. It meant that the real
world range. I've got a Porsche Taycan Turbo S here. All 950 horsepower of it. Yeah. And a
thousand, and God knows how many feet of torque. That's doing on average about 2.9.
Yeah. Two and a half tons. Yeah. It's in summer, in summer. Yeah. So in winter,
the Alpine will only do just over 100 miles on a charge, which is really limiting and quite
frustrating. And then in summer, so right now, it's doing 3.7 miles per kilowatt hour. So close to
double. That's crazy. So it will do 200 miles on a warm summer's day, maybe not a roasting hot
summer's day. So that, yeah, get this massive variation from 100 miles to 200 miles, depending
on the seasons. Yeah. So we know EVs hate cold weather, but the Alpine A290s seems to despise
it more than most. So that was an interesting learning in running that car for six months.
I will be very, very sorry to see it go there. Okay. Well, thanks everyone for listening. If
you're going to be at Goodwood and you see one of us knocking about, come and say hello. Please.
And I will just remind you all that if you are not yet a subscriber to the intercooler,
you really ought to go and check it out. There'll be a link in the description.
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already. And thank you ever so much. And maybe we'll see a few of you at the Festival of Speed.
Next weekend. But forward to it.
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About this episode
Explore the fascinating evolution of the Goodwood Festival of Speed from a temporary 1993 stopgap into the UK's premier motoring event. Hosts Dan Proser and Andrew Frankel trace how a simple hill climb, originally meant to pave the way for circuit racing's return, unexpectedly drew tens of thousands of fans and transformed into a global launchpad for supercars. The duo share thrilling stories from the challenging hill climb, discuss legendary record-breakers like the McMurtry Spéirling, and recount personal, white-knuckle experiences navigating the notorious Molecomb corner.
Original notes
Dan Prosser and Andrew Frankel investigate how the Goodwood Festival of Speed became the UK's biggest and most important car show. From humble beginnings in 1993 when just 2000 people were expected to attend, the event now welcomes more than 200,000 car enthusiasts each year, as well numerous new car debuts and superstar special guests.
Use coupon code pod20 at checkout to get 20% off your subscription to The Intercooler's online car magazine for the first year! Listen to this podcast ad-free, and enjoy a subscriber-only midweek podcast too. With a 30-day free trial, you can try it risk-free – https://www.the-intercooler.com/subscribe/
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The Intercooler
Dan Prosser and Andrew Frankel
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