Goodwood Baby!

Yesterday I got up at the insane time of 5am (with other insane early commuters) to catch the bus and the 5.53am tube train from Angel to get to Loughton, where Rob picked me up in his Mondeo and we set off on the 100mile journey clockwise across Dartford to head towards Chichester and the Goodwood Manor.

Lord March is a legend. He has his own 1.16mile driveway which is good enough to be stage for racing, his own rally stage in the forest, and a buggerload of land for offroading. You wouldn't believe the amount of people who turned up on friday. It was more than you'd see on Sunday at a British GP!

So we met up with Rob's flatmate Paul R. and JJ, and eventually on the 100 hectares of land, we found Chris and Sian. Being my first time there I didn't know what to expect. But its definately better than any motor show as you get right up close to the action. I would upload some pictures if they weren't all 2MB jpegs - and if I wasn't using a mac. You walk around the paddock and get right up to close to the cars. Automotive pornography at its best: Old, new, Le Mans, Rallying, F1, everything is there. DBR9, Veyron, that new Maybach, all the 997 Porsche varieties, and in particular a "100 years of GP" stand which looked very impressive. There's also a road car section, where JJ and I decided to do the challenge of which coupe can we fit in properly. This involved one of us being squished and the other sitting in the front seat. Our scientific test had the following conclusions:

• The new Audi TT was rubbish at 2+2, JJ couldn't even sit up straight, he had to tilt his neck in the back. Meanwhile I was sitting in the front with my knees IN the dashboard.
• The Jaguar XK had the rear headroom, but legs were cramped back and in front.
• The winner was the BMW M6, which easily allowed us to fit in happily. Our knees did not have to make contact with anypiece of the car at all. Plus 501BHP V10 is nice.

Talking about making contact, when we tried the Peugeot 407 coupe, I got in the back, and I'm thinking "this is ok" when JJ puts the driver's seat in the correct position and the electric seat keeps moving back until it ate my feet. ARGH! No jokes! The Peugeot lady who was sitting in the front passenger seat said the car was acting funny because it was low on power. Not funny. I honestly couldn't move. I was immobilised by this french lion who had munched my Reeboks. Luckily someone came only with the key to switch on the engine. Provide some power to release my feet. Then JJ and the Peugeot lady got chatting. I was just the extra in the car. And I discovered the problem of the Coupe – I was stuck. I had to sit in the conversation when I really wanted to leave.

Another highlight of the day was when it was pissing it down and we saught refuge in the BMW M5 safety car for the Formula BMW championship. The first thing we noticed was a panel of 3 switches on the dash that said "LED" "Headlamps" and "Roof". How cool was that? 5.0 V10, Heads–Up Display and flashing lights. We turned them on naturally so that Rob, Paul, Chris & Sian could spot which car we were in :D

To finish off our "Which car can we fit in properly" experiment, we decided to check out some 7 seaters since there was 6 of us. The Q7 we couldn't be bothered to properly test (although it was very nice inside). The Land Rover Discovery 3 easily fitted the 6 of us in, even with tall Paul in the back row (more space than the average coupe)!

Can we paint this (Land Rover) yellow and write "SCHOOL BUS" on the side?

Anyway, we didn't manage to get a ride in the Porsche Cayenne Turbos gunning it around a field. So we had to settle for a comfortable cruise around some rocky terrain in a horrifically expensive Toyota Landcruiser (£50k!!!) and a Nissan Navara. The off–road capabilities were very impressive! We then checked out the rally stage and paddock. Marcus Gronholm's Ford Focus WRC was around but I'm not sure if it was him driving. There were some nice vintage Rally cars like the original Audi Quattro, a cute Saab, Porsche 959 and Richard Burns' 2001 Subaru Impreza.

Anyway it got late and Rob and I left to sit in the Goodwood traffic and it took us an achingly long time to travel to Laura's house in Woking. 2hrs for 40miles. In fairness it was the fault of the GPS, as it convienently died because of the Surrey foliage cover, every time an important junction was coming up. This prompted me to rename GPS as Glorified Piece of Shit. Then we, with Will (making a party of 4), went for dinner, where we failed a buffet challenge, even with Mr Hoover (Will). That finished off a very nice day, and it was 11.30pm. Rob and I had been up since 5am, and he had to drive us back to North London! Poor Rob. And to make matters worse, the Mondeo's stereo was broken, so we had to use the radio on our phones! Just freezing cold air conditioning to keep him awake. Long and tiring, but worth it. Next time we'll stay over in Paul and JJ's town which is only 30mins from Goodwood manor.

Nathaniel Ho : 08 Jul 2006 20:45 |  Tags: Cars F1 Friends Motorsport |  Comments (5) |  Report a problem