TREATS GALORE AT THE LATEST FESTIVAL OF SPEED
TREATS GALOR AT THE LATEST FESTIVAL OF SPEED
ON TO GOODWOOD AND ITS second Moving Motor Show. Held the day before the Festival of Speed, It proceeded without a hitch. I have a friend who went there not just to enjoy the static elements of the Festival with only a fraction of the weekend crowds, but because he is a real punter in search of a new car. it’s like seeing all the dealers you want to visit lined up in the same street” he said. And, as with all dealers, he got better service from some than others. In one afternoon he got all the information he needed, pored over the products and even got a run around the course. As a Festival devotee he was going anyway, so the MMS saved him a substantial amount of time and helped him come to the most informed decision possible.
The FoS was as compelling as ever. Its secret is its setting: not only are the grounds beautiful there’s enough space to provide something to appeal to people with only a fleeting interest in motors. Where else would you find Lewis Hamilton driving his title-winning McLaren vying for the crowd’s attention with a Nissan Juke which progressed up the hill agonisingly slowly on account of being driven the entire way on two wheels? My favourite moment out of a car was chatting with Sir Stirling Moss and Norman Dewis about their 1952 Mille Miglia. More than anyone else, these two pushed development of the disc brake despite myriad teething problems. Jaguar entered a C-type (the now sadly broken up XKC003) for Stirling to drive,
and he took Norman along not to read pace notes but because she was the only person who knew how to fix the brakes”.
Stirling reckons he and Norman are the only two-man Mille Miglia crew sun/lying today (“at least of those you might have heard of”), the pair having 171 birthdays between them.
Not that you’d know it. I haven’t seen Stirling on such bubbling good form In a while it seems retirement is sitting happily on his shoulders. As for Norman, he’d been given E2A (above left), the unique missing link between the Jaguar Dand E-type, for the weekend. I saw him blast off the line on Friday morning and caught up with him at the top of the hill. I asked how the run went. “Oh, early days,” he replied. “I did get the tail out but only a bit. I’ll work up to it should have her going nicely by Sunday afternoon.” If anyone has told Norman he’s 90, it’s clearly slipped his mind.
Jay Leno was making lots of noise in the Bob Tullius Group 44 E-type but he also had a run up the hill in John Cobb’s Napier-Railton, describing it as “the realisation of a childhood ambition”. The man was clearly moved and he revealed why. As a lad, when all his friends had pictures of Farrah Fawcett on their bedroom walls, he had a photo of Cobb In the RalIton with all four wheels off the ground over the bump on the banking at Brooklands.