Goodwood Members Meeting - Dave's 60th....
So, start of the Goodwood year with the 77th Members Meeting and an opportunity to invite Dave Cresswell as part of his ongoing 60th birthday celebrations. We equipped him with some insurance and the Aston Martin DB7 and set off down to Chichester to the soundtrack of the 6 litre V12 and Dave going "wow!" "wow!" at regular intervals (I think he liked it!). Followed an interesting car for part of the journey, see the picture below and see if you can identify it (answer at the end of the Blog). I've put various piccies in this blog but if you want a really full & professional set of photos check out gettyimages.co.uk and search 77th members meeting goodwood.
The weather was kind and the day was fantastic. The Members Meeting is a bit like the Revival Meeting but without the crowds There is a great deal of style, swathes of spring daffodils and of course the opportunity to get up close to some beautiful and historic motor cars and to watch some great racing. If you're going to do it, do it right, so our visit began with champagne and full english breakfast in the Ballroom of Goodwood House followed by a quick tour of some of the Duke's art and porcelain collection prior to being chauffered across to the motor circuit.
Our day included watching some great racing from various vantage points but particularly enjoyed being by the chicane during the highly competitive mini racing. Pictures only tell part of the story so I have added a couple of videos (Betty Richmond Trophy for the minis, The S.F. Edge Trophy for pre-1923 Brooklands style racing, including the oldest surviving racing Bugatti from 1912). Lots of other videos of the day can be found on YouTube.
Off the track the opportunity to wander around the paddocks and take in the full close-up glory of these historic racing machines was a joy and aside from the historic cars we were also up close with the new Pininfarina Battista, an electric car with a proposed production of 150 units, 0-100kph in under 2secs and 0-300kph in under 12secs!!! Among the cars on show and raced check out "The Beast of Turin" on YouTube. There was lots to see in the Bentley department including "No10" which competed at LeMans in 1925 and "No9" the 1926 LeMans car of Scrap Thistlethwayte, one of the Bentley Boys. The Bentley Speed 8 which won LeMans in 2003 was also on track together with 2 of the 3 winning drivers Guy Smith & Tom Kristensen (who has won Le Mans 7 times! Not too shabby). A happy hour was also spent reviewing the Bonhams auction cars for sale on the sunday but managed to resist putting in any bids (tempting though!).
Racing continued into dusk with a display of LeMans cars but that was not the end of our day. One of the highlights of the Members Meeting is the evening entertainments; from 20:0 to 22:00 it was live bands, street theatre with drummers dancers and performers, acrobats, dancers and then at 22:00 a magnificent fireworks finale. All in all a great event in itself and so it was time for chauffeur to Goodwood House and back up to Penn in the DB7 ("Wow, wow" says Dave but notes that the headlight-technologies have come on dramatically in the last 17 years).
The Mystery Car.....lots of Bulldog Anorak/Respect points if you identified the car as an Eadon Green Zeclat, a 1930's inspired retro styled British sports car introduced in 2018. Eadon Green hope to build approx 25 units per year at around Pst.550k each. Power is from a Corvette 6.2l V8 producing 460hp.