Exquisite treasures from the Festival of Speed car park

The Goodwood treats begin even before you get into the event - here's the highlights from Day 1

Autocar

4 July 2019

Follow @@autocar

Slide of

The Goodwood Festival of Speed 2019 has just begun.

The car festival basked in the summer sunshine as thousands of car fans from across the country and beyond descended on the annual event. For a lot of fans, the excitement starts as early as the public car park, with a whole host of rare and exciting metal turning up for the occasion.

Goodwood's organisers have helped make car spotters' jobs easier in recent years, opening a dedicated performance car park for drivers of powerful or exotic machines to congregate in one place, close to one of the Festival's main entrances. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights:
Slide of

Ariel Nomad

Respect to this owner. The Nomad may only have a 4-cylinder engine offering 235bhp, but that’s plenty in a car that weighs just 670kg (1474 lb). It’s one of our favourite cars, all ten-tenths of it. Plenty of our road testers would pick a Nomad to play with on a circuit before they’d consider a dozen high-profile sports cars and supercars, and that’s not even the Nomad’s home turf. Get it on the road, where it’s also sensational, or loose ground, where it’s best of all, and it excels on another level.

The key to it is that it’s not just technically accomplished and not just huge amounts of fun; it’s both at the same time. No other car lets you take so much joy from so few components.
Slide of

Audi RS2

We have significant want for this car. Produced for just over a year, the RS2 Avant was the first RS model to come from Audi – and what an opening salvo it was. It may have packed a mere 2.2-litre five-pot engine, but thanks to a turbocharger there was 311bhp on tap which was enough to take the car to over 160mph. All of the near-3000 RS2s built also came with a six-speed manual gearbox and quattro four-wheel drive.
Slide of

Lotus Exige Cup 430

Long-in-tooth the Exige may be, but this version is the model's apogee. With 0-62mph acceleration of just 3.3 seconds and a top speed of 180mph, it's the quickest street-legal Lotus ever. Lotus claims a lightest dry weight of 1056kg (2323 lb), which makes for 407bhp per tonne with a 430bhp total.
Slide of

De Tomaso Pantera

Looking reseplendent in the sun is this Pantera. The car was a international one as Argentinian Alejandro de Tomaso married US V8 muscle to his pretty Italian coachbuilt sports models. He’d already dabbled with the recipe, but it was the Pantera that caught the imagination of supercar buyers thanks to its sensational looks and reliable Ford engine that started with 330bhp in 1971.

During a remarkably long life that outlived even the Lamborghini Countach, the Pantera survived until 1991 in GT5S form still with the same motor but now making 350bhp. Rather appropriate to be at the event, as a new De Tomaso company used the first morning of the festival to unveil its new mid-engined P72 supercar; 72 examples will be made.
Slide of

Ferrari 458 Speciale

The last of the normally aspirated mid-engined V8s, the 458 Speciale’s 4.5-litre V8 generated 135bhp per litre – the highest specific output of any normally-aspirated engine available when it arrived in 2013. That was just one of the reasons why we said: “In so many ways the 458 Speciale is simply unequalled – and we wonder if Maranello will turn out anything quite like it ever again.”
Slide of

Ferrari F430 Scuderia

And here’s the Speciale’s predecessor. The F430 represented a bigger leap over the 360M than we expected – especially as the two cars looked so similar. But the Scuderia took things to a whole new level, with F1 tech turning the F430 into one of the best cars we’d ever driven; it was 100kg (220 lb) lighter than the F430, but had 20 more horses, to 510bhp.
Slide of

Lamborghini Gallardo LP570-4 Spyder Performante

We would like a summer drive around the windy roads of Sussex in this, wind in our hair. Launched in 2011, this model featured a 570bhp V10, giving 0-60mph in 3.9 seconds, off to a 201mph top. The Gallardo was going out in style; it was replaced by the Huracan in 2013.
Slide of

Lamborghini Urus

Even Lamborghini couldn’t ignore the SUV trend. With illustrious sisters like the Bentley Bentayga, this sharp-edged machine seemingly defies the laws of physics as it barrels along, with power from its twin-turbo 4.0-litre V8, exuding menace in gunmetal grey.
Slide of

Lotus Europa

Among all the brawny supercars, we couldn’t help pay homage to this Lotus. The model was launched in 1966, and its ambition was to use a mid-engined layout, which had firmly become a mainstay of Grand Prix cars, and applying it to volume sports car production.

Originally bonded to the chassis for maximum structural stiffness, the lightweight fibreglass body helped make the most of the Renault-sourced engine’s rather modest 82bhp.
Slide of

McLaren 570S Spider

The 570S Spider is a simply beautiful thing. The 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8 engine, designed in collaboration with Ricardo and manufactured in Shoreham, produces 562bhp, or 570PS, to give this McLaren its name.
Slide of

McLaren 570GT

Take a look at this exquisite McLaren, its paint gleaming in the Sussex sun. McLarens have steadily got better-looking since the MP4 12C of 2011, and the glass-hatched 570GT is the best yet. The glazing creates cleaner lines, with the added appeal of being side-hinged. Launched in 2016, it was designed to be the McLaren for the daily driver, with more cargo space behind the seats.
Slide of

Morgan Aero8

Undeniably a Morgan, but with a modern twist, which means this Aero8 was getting a lot of admiring glances at Goodwood. The effect is even more pronounced with the side-exit exhaust system, and the bassy V8 soundtrack.
Slide of

Porsche 911 2.7 Carrera RS

This is no normal 911. You’re looking at one of just 19 right-hand drive RSs. Exceptionally desirable, this is probably the most valuable car featured in this story. One recently sold for £511,000 (US$664,000) at auction. Power is from a 2.7-litre 207bhp, flat-six of course, and they’re considered the greatest classic 911 of them all.
Slide of

Porsche 911S

We come down to earth a bit with this 911S. But doesn’t this 1966 example look splendid?
Slide of

Porsche Cayman GT4

This model first launched in 2015 and is notable for being the first GT model from Porsche in 25 years that’s not from the 911 range or something even rarer. It pushed the Cayman to its limit with a 0-62mph time of 4.2 seconds, but what mattered more was the feeling this was a bespoke model that deserved its title alongside some very illustrious ancestors. It's already a collector's item.
Slide of

BMW Z3M Coupe

This one is easy to include and sum up: The only Z3 we really liked. Because it was mad.

Close

Read time: 0 mins

Advertisement