As I bent down to snap yet another photo of yet another bright-hued supercar, I heard a deep voice over my shoulder.
“I’ve got a model of that car,” boomed the throaty British accent.
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I looked up and saw a shirtless middle-aged man holding a bottle of Goodwood Ale stretch his hand toward the blue TVR Tuscan I was photographing.
“Hell, I’ve got a model of most of these. It’s as close as I’ll ever get,” he laughed, stumbling in the general direction of a line of Porsches.
The parking lot at the 2018 Goodwood Festival of Speed
The parking lot at the 2018 Goodwood Festival of Speed
The parking lot at the 2018 Goodwood Festival of Speed
The parking lot at the 2018 Goodwood Festival of Speed
I was in the Supercar/Performance Car Parking zone during the Goodwood Festival of Speed in the south of England. From a distance, the understatement-of-the-year parking lot looks like a life-size version of the model cars being peddled by a vendor about half a mile away, on the other side of Lord March’s driveway.
At any car show, from Cars and Coffee to a full-on concours event, the parking lot is often just as entertaining as the show. Goodwood is no exception, and while the supercar lot with its quartet of Lamborghini Uruses (Urii?) had the most eye candy, even the remote lots we whizzed past on the way to Goodwood House impressed.
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Parking lots at car shows are a reminder that enthusiasm for cars extends far beyond supercars.
I saw pristine examples of classic British roadsters, a staggeringly original blue Mercedes-Benz 190E, a mean-looking Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, numerous right-hand-drive Ford Mustangs, forbidden enthusiast fruit such as a BMW Alpina 3-Series Sport Wagon, a Jaguar C-Type replica that may have been the real thing, and even an Aston Martin Vanquish Zagato.
The parking lot at the 2018 Goodwood Festival of Speed
The parking lot at the 2018 Goodwood Festival of Speed
The parking lot at the 2018 Goodwood Festival of Speed
The parking lot at the 2018 Goodwood Festival of Speed
It’s hard to say what car held my attention for the longest, but this year’s featured marque was most prevalent. Porsches were just as common on Lord March’s lawn as they were in a dedicated parking lot near the Porsche Experience—a field in which attendees could sign up for a hoon-tastic ride in a new Cayenne piloted by a Porsche driver.
As if to make the Lamborghini Uruseseses look commonplace, the Porsche enthusiast lot was loaded with Stuttgart’s finest. I counted five GT3 RS coupes and will admit more than a tinge of jealousy when I looked inside a green GT2 to see both houndstooth fabric and a manual transmission.
However, the highlight of the lot was a white 930 Turbo with positively ‘80s “Turbo” graphics running over its flared fenders. It was a little hint of Radwood in Southeast England, and it made me smile for its period goodness.
Oh, and I have a model of one.
There was much, much more going on Goodwood. For our complete coverage on the event, head to our dedicated hub.
