It was good to be back
Mark Smyth looks at some of the new models shown at Goodwood Festival of Speed and the joy of actually being able to mingle among them
Image: Mark Smyth
The world continues to be far from normal, though we are getting glimpses of normality here and there. This includes the return of car shows big and small. There are the club meets where friends get to hang out and chat about their year and how much they’ve missed being together and then there are bigger events, like Goodwood Festival of Speed in the south of England.
This motoring extravaganza was relegated to an online streaming event in 2020 like so many others, but this year it was back and having been granted UK government trial something or other status, it was almost normal. Thousands of people filled the beautiful grounds of the estate to fawn over cars old and new, meet the drivers and watch some mostly fast machinery charge up the famous hill track or run through the forest rally stage. It was as close to normal as we’ve been in ages, albeit while wearing a mask and constantly rubbing our hands with hand sanitiser.
Forget pandemic issues, this was about petrolhead issues, though not entirely. This year there was a whole area dedicated to electric cars with exciting models like the new Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, Polestar Precept and the Lotus Emira.
Image: Mark Smyth
We’re not so sure about the new Land Rover Defender V8 though, which was first seen in public at the show. It’s good but not as good as we expected it to be, perhaps because we’ve just been seriously impressed by the new plug-in hybrid Defender.
BMW showed off its new 2 Series which had its big global reveal at the event slightly tarnished by the leaking of pictures of it a couple of days before. Good news is that it doesn’t have a big ugly grille, unlike the new iX, which we saw for the first time in the metal at Goodwood and which we never want to see again, though as it’s our job, we probably will have to.
Image: Mark Smyth