Axon's Automotive Anorak: Goodwood's impact on the motoring world

TVR’s new owner Les Edgar himself commented that there was no more fitting location to re-launch the iconic British TVR brand than Goodwood, given the venue’s history, innate Britishness and its contribution to motor racing and the automotive sector. 

The re-launch of TVR and world premiere of its new Griffith model within the Goodwood motor circuit – staged in the Earls Court Motor Show exhibition – was a first for the Goodwood Revival, proving the magnitude and global status of the event.

Brand new cars and variants had previously made their world debuts at the Revival too, but always over the road from the circuit. Such as the Connaught Syracuse Type-D GT V8 hybrid coupe in 2006, and the new special edition Caterham Seven Sprint this year, which sold out by 12 noon on the first day at the Revival.

The Goodwood Festival of Speed has been the chosen venue for many more new model launches, with around 30 or so world or UK debuts this year alone, including the global launch of Porsche’s 911 GT2 RS and Turbo S Exclusive derivatives, which were introduced to the international media during FOS at the Goodwood circuit. Official launches for cars and marques as diverse as the Caparo T1 and the UK re-launch of the Abarth brand in 2007 also took place at the Goodwood track.

Perhaps the most strange but true new model launch at Goodwood was the global press introduction of the famous Reliant Robin in October 1973, with the Goodwood Motor Circuit (by then closed to competitive racing for seven years) chosen by Reliant to introduce the ‘plastic pig’ (as the three-wheeler became disparagingly known by the police) to the motoring media, which consisted mainly specialist motorcycle journalists, rather than the traditional four-wheeled motoring press.

After the Goodwood circuit was opened on September 18^th, 1948, staging the UK’s first public post-war motor race meeting in the process, the West Sussex track was also used extensively for endurance testing by motor manufacturers, racing teams and even motorcycle makers, as well as racing.

These included McLaren and much of the development testing for the then-now 1967 Ford-Cosworth DFV Grand Prix engine. In the early 1950s, Morris used Goodwood for a major endurance test for its best-selling Minor, lapping the Motor Circuit non-stop day and night for an entire week, including an ingenious mobile service and refuelling Morris service vehicle to keep the Minor running at all times. Honda achieved a similar feat too in the early 1960s when it took into first tentative steps into the British market, successfully running a C50 moped non-stop on the Goodwood track for seven days and nights.

The Goodwood name hasn’t just been restricted to motorsport and circuit use though. In 1936 Austin introduced the 14 Goodwood 1.7-litre saloon and cabriolet range, taking the Goodwood horse racing course as its naming inspiration (Austin also using other horse racing venues to name its models at the time, such as Kempton, Ascot, etc.).

Post-war the Goodwood name appeared on a metallic Goodwood Green coloured limited edition UK market-only Peugeot 309 GTi Goodwood model, launched in 1992. Just one year before the first Festival of Speed was held, and six years before the inaugural Goodwood Revival.

More recently, the ultra-exclusive MINI Goodwood Package, with BMW’s fashionable compact city car re-trimmed with luxury appointments at the Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Goodwood-based production facility, opened to huge fanfare on the Goodwood Estate land on 1^st January 2003.

Goodwood has certainly made quite an impact on the motor industry and looks set to for many years to come, with 2018 seeing the 25^th anniversary of the Festival of Speed, as well as the 20^th for the Goodwood Revival.

Photography by Tom Shaxson and James Lynch