Petrolhead revisited

AS youthful music fans headed to Glastonbury for the last weekend in June, older and more well-heeled festival-goers keyed a different destination into their satnavs. The Goodwood Festival of Speed, held annually since 1993 in the grounds of a stately home in West Sussex, is petrolhead heaven. Hundreds of racing cars spanning the decades are on display and noisily burn rubber on the “hill climb” course, a racetrack. But alongside the supercars and classic vehicles are more humdrum machines, for Goodwood has inadvertently assumed the role of hosting Britain’s national motor show.

Cavernous venues in London, at Olympia and Earl’s Court, and later Birmingham, used to host the more traditional event in the mould of the big international shows staged in Geneva or Detroit. But the last of these biannual gatherings took place in London’s Docklands in 2008. The next was a victim of belt-tightening in the wake of the financial crisis, and although only Germans buy more cars in Europe and production in the UK is set to hit a record high in 2017 an “official” British motor show has failed to get back on the road. One reason for this is that carmakers prefer to champion national brands at home. The vast halls of Frankfurt are stuffed with models made by VW, Mercedes and BMW. In Paris French cars command acres of floorspace despite paltry worldwide sales. But Japan’s Nissan is Britain biggest carmaker, Jaguar Land Rover is owned by Indians and Mini and Bentley by Germans.