One of the disadvantages of being a one-man band is that things pile up in front of you and there is every chance of losing sight of what should be a priority.
Take the Festival of Speed for example, I received a mountain of great photos from our resident lens-meister, Simon Hildrew. These arrived in the middle of a deadline or three, all urgent, well aren’t they all?
I will deal with them later, says I. Bollocks you will, say others and, of course they were right. One urgent edit/picture request follows another as the struggle to keep afloat obscures other priorities.
So relaxing in a modest villa here in Menorca, I realised after a prompt from a very patient Simon that I had taken my eye off the ball and forgotten to post up the gallery and story that I had prepared from the Festival of Speed. Mea Culpa.
The time for a detailed analysis has clearly passed, the gallery is what matters but it is worth flagging up a few highlights. A brace of 70th birthdays for Lotus and Land Rover, quintessentially British but both foreign owned, a metaphor for our times.
Volswagen’s amazing record earlier in the year at Pikes Peak was celebrated by Romain Dumas as he took top spot on the Hill in the Volkswagen I. D. R. Pikes Peak. He certainly gave the crowds something to cheer with his enthusiastic performance.
Off-roading and kickin’ up a little dust was obviously the new black, Valtteri Bottas joined the gang in his 2016 F1 Mercedes……
Steve McQueen’s performance in “Bullitt” has passed into cinematic legend particular the famous standard-setting car chase sequence. Recently one of the two Mustangs that were used in the film surfaced after many years. At Goodwood it made its first appearance outside the US…………iconic or what?
The lawn in front of the Stables gave us its usual cornucopia of goodies, my personal favourite was this exquisite 1954 Jaguar XK140 with styling by Pinin Farina.
As with every motoring event of any stature these days there was an auction, at Goodwood it was Bonhams, always special. Indeed a new record was set by legendary Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato ‘2 VEV’, raising just over £10 million.
The Festival of Speed was also celebrating; 25 years of motoring excellence since the first show back in 1993. In the midst of all the excitement and reminiscing there were a few clouds on the horizon as some of the manufacturers normally present were missing. The FoS organisers will have to work doubly hard to keep up the level of their show in this time of budget cuts. If anyone can manage that challenging task it will be them as the evidence of a quarter of a century can attest.
In the meantime let’s enjoy another stupendous wall of imagery from Simon Hildrew.
John Brooks, September 2018