Goodwood FOS 2019 Review - First Glance + Other Displays

The next and final section of the Goodwood Festival of Speed review for this year is the First Glance Paddock and the smaller displays such as the Performance Parking and the independent stands. The First Glance paddock tends to do what it says on the tin, if you will, with many manufacturers debuting new models and occasionally the announcement of a car nobody knew existed

First Glance Paddock

Firstly at the First Glance paddock was a new version of the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio being the AR Racing edition. This was made to celebrate Alfa Romeo's return to Formula One with the Alfa Romeo Sauber team. Many people will look at this and just think its a Giulia with a livery, when in fact the AR pack adds an Akrapovic titanium exhaust, many carbon fibre parts such as the rear diffuser and a more prominent rear wing and, most importantly, it gives the owner status. The reason for this is Alfa will only bring 10 of these special editions to the UK and only 3 of the Stelvio AR which is the AR version of their SUV. The next car is a very interesting Aston Martin being the prototype of the DBX. The DBX is set to be the first SUV made by Aston Martin which has now been confirmed for a December launch and it made an appearance under a camo livery in order to hide the body shape and the styling until a full launch. The camo car did look good unfortunately I did not love it like I do many other Aston Martins such as the next car. The Rapide has been at the forefront of luxury for Aston Martin and had gone through many facelifts and changes but none so dramatic as the new Rapide E. This fully electric version of the Rapide will be the first fully electric car built by Aston Martin. However it will not be mass produced with numbers limited at 155 examples which is a shame. But for a £250,000 price tag on each car, I doubt there will be many more buyers. Bentley had two new models debuting beginning with the Bentayga Speed which is an updated version of the original W12 model. This update features the darker grills and bumpers and an alternative hybrid V6 engine. If I'm honest, I believe this to just be an update for the sake of updating as the Bentayga was fine as is. The other model they were debuting was the new Flying Spur which for once didn't look like a hideous monstrosity like it used to. Actually looks very clean, very luxury and incredibly Bentley. BMW debuted another hideous M version of one of their SUVs. The X4 is a car that is caught in limbo, it's not luxury enough to fit into the family of the X7 and X5 but not small enough to be classed as a crossover like the X1 and X3. It fits into the worst section for BMWs which is the sports SUV which homes the X4 and the X6. The Competition version adds a little bit of extra horsepower, a few carbon bits and not much else. Citroen showed their new C5 Aircross SUV which was only really there to represent Citroen for their 100th anniversary and therefore did not get very much attention. Ford showed off the insane looking updated version of the GT500 Mustang which is set to be the most powerful Ford Mustang of all time. Although an official figure has not been released, Ford have said it has excess of 700bhp which is Ferrari 812 power. The green spec on it helped to make it look as if it were the vehicular incarnation of the Incredible Hulk which was incredible alongside the next car which is the Honda e. The Honda e is a cute little car made by Honda as their first entrant into the electric car market and it was the cutest thing at the whole show. It was so small and cutesy compared to all the massive SUVs and Crossovers and actually looks a fun and happy little car. Also it is unique as it does not have a 6000 mile range like many electric cars predict - may be a bit of an exaggeration but even so. Jaguar last year debuted their XE SV Project 8 which is a customer racing kind of car. Based on the XE saloon, the Project 8 is limited to 300 units with a top speed of 200mph to create an insane saloon car. With 0-60mph in 3.7 seconds it is one of the fastest four-door cars on the market. However the Project 8 at this years FOS was a little different, because Jaguar brought the new Touring package. The Touring package has identical statistics to the regular XE except with the reduction of the carbon fibre rear wing. The Touring package is limited to 15 examples and the price is expected to be above the £149,995 price of the regular Project 8. From what I saw at Goodwood, this car is one of the greatest saloons currently on the market and it 100% makes up for the very high price of the car. Jeep made their debut at Goodwood by bringing their ultimate hybrid. A hybrid between an SUV and powerful muscle car that is. The Jeep Cherokee Trackhawk features the 6.2 litre V8 used in the Dodge Challenger Hellcat and Demon, which produces 697bhp and can propel the Jeep to a 180mph top speed which is ridiculous for a 2.3 tonne 4x4. Lamborghini also brought their Urus for the first glance paddock which is not really a first glance but it's always good to see a Urus. Lexus brought their new RCF Track Edition which took the already insane RCF and boosted the power, the aerodynamics and increased the carbon fibre usage by around 800%. This must be the ultimate form of the Lexus RCF as I don't see how Lexus can do any better with the RCF. Next is the Lotus Evora GT4 which is a track version of the Evora for Lotus customers to buy and take to tracks much like the Ferrari XX programme or Aston Martin's AMR programme. The Lotus sounded absolutely godly and one can only dream of the sound of 20 or more of these rocketing around a circuit. Maserati brought their new upgraded version of the Levante 4x4 with the V8 similar to the Quattroporte GTS and very similar to the Ferrari 488 GTB. Mercedes and Mini shared a similarity in that they both showed some new cars under camo being the new Mercedes A45 AMG and the electric Mini concept. Both of which went a little under my radar due to 'better' cars elsewhere. These better cars can include the new Polestar One which is a subseries of Volvo with their electric saloon which is the only electric car that I think I would go out and but because I was so impressed with it. Another of the wow factor cars is the Porsche Taycan which nobody knew existed yet. It is the Porsche electric car that has been teased for years but never seen. Granted it was shown under a camo that hid the body shape but it was still there and I was there for the world debut of the Porsche Taycan. Overall the First Glance paddock was very interesting and very good to see what will be gracing showrooms over the next year or so.

Other Displays

The final section of this review has to cover the multiple other displays at Goodwood which includes Performance Parking and the independent stands as well as random pop up displays. I'll begin with the random pop up areas.

The main area of this was the Bentley centenary celebration in the centre of all the manufacturer stands on the green. This was a display of 30-40 cars that celebrated the 100 years of Bentley with some very special cars dotted around. I'm not very knowledgeable about the older Bentleys so the cars that stuck out to me were the modern ones such as the brand new Mulsanne Speed talked about prior. There was also a Bentley Continental GTZ on this green which is a regular 2006 Continental but with the body styled by Zagato. A very controversial design that I love and others hate but I found the signature Zagato 'double-bubble' on the roof line to be the feature that swayed the GTZ from hate to love. The other notable Bentley was the Continental GT3-R which is a one of 300 Bentley inspired by motorsport hence the British Racing Green touches and the carbon fibre spoiler that would be very strange on a regular Bentley.  A second pop up area I was a large fan of was the Pagani area. On the day I attended the Pagani Raduno was supposed to attend with multiple one off Zondas and Huayra BCs and Huayras but they did not attend although they said they would. However there were some Zondas there. In a row of 5 cars there was Zonda 001 which was the first C12 chassis produced known as La Nona (grandmother) which had been restored to original status after going through multiple changes to other specifications. Next along was the Zonda F in red with black carbon accents which was my favourite of the 5 due to the simplistic beauty and presence that came with it. Next in the line up was a carbon blue bodied Pagani Zonda Revolucion which was the track only Zonda built for those to track day their Zondas. Next was one of the rarest Paganis in existence in the form of the Cinque. This one of 5 car was built as a farewell to the Zonda name with lots of carbon fibre elements in what we thought was the last iteration of the great car. Well 7 years after the release of the Cinque, Pagani came up with the HP Barchetta which is one of three which Pagani now say is the last Zonda. This example finished in carbon blue over regular black carbon with wheel shields much alike the old Jaguar Le Mans cars and a bespoke interior. This actual car is owned by Pagani founder, Horatio Pagani hence why it's one of the prettiest cars around. Another interesting area was that of 4 cars down by the south performance car park. There were two cool cars and two amazing cars. The two cool cars were a Dodge Challenger SRT Demon which is an 840hp, £100,000 muscle car and a Miami Blue Porsche 911 GT2 RS which was only the 4th GT2 RS I had seen. But now the amazing cars begin with a McLaren P1 LM which is a one of 6, road legal version of the McLaren P1 GTR. When the P1 GTRs were being converted to a road legal, Lanzante Motorsport commissioned 6 P1 LMs for road use exclusively. It also held the lap record at the Nürburgring with 6m 43secs but it was disqualified as it did not hold a registration plate and therefore could not be recorded. However even with all these credentials, the McLaren was not the best car here. The best car was a really strange looking Aston Martin. It had the general body shape of the One-77 but had a large carbon rear wing, massive wide arches and a ridiculous front splitter. It turns out that this car was the test mule for the Aston Martin Vulcan based on an unused Aston Martin One-77 chassis, which explains all of the aerodynamic modifications. It is also apparently the first time that Aston Martin has shown this car in public.

Performance Parking

The Performance Parking area is set up every year for owners to pay a certain fee to have their car parked inside the grounds at Goodwood to which some would say is a car show in itself. The South Performance Parking was a lot quieter than the main PP area but still had some hidden surprises. The one that caught my eye the most was obviously the blue Pagani Zonda C12 S with lots of carbon additions. The Pagani Raduno was supposed to be around on the Saturday but unfortunately this Zonda was the only example ,of over 20 on the Raduno, that was there. Even so I never complained. Along with this was a Ferrari 360CS, Lamborghini Diablo SV, Porsche 911 GT3 RS 4.0, Jaguar XE SV Project 8, two Ferrari 488 Pistas and a Liberty Walk Ford Mustang GT. This was only day one as well. Day 2 consisted of an Aston Martin DBS Superleggera, a couple of new Aston Martin Vantages, a Ferrari 458 Speciale, another Ferrari 488 Pista, a 1989 Aston Martin Vantage Volante and a McLaren 600LT.

The main PP makes the south one look like a regular car park, which very clearly is difficult to do. The direction we entered the festival happened to be by the Performance Parking which was an added bonus. In this car park there was two Lamborghini Aventador SVJs, a brand new Lamborghini Huracan EVO, McLaren 675LT, lots of McLaren 600LTs and Ferrari 488 Pistas, a Porsche 918 Weissech, a Porsche 911 GT2 RS, another Porsche 918 Spyder, the Team Galag Batmobile Tumbler, a Ferrari F12 N-Largo S and a very rare Weissmann MF5. That list should state the obvious that this car park was so much better.