Goodwood Moving Motor Show: (almost) an unqualified success

The Goodwood Moving Motor Show

Yesterday we toddled along to Goodwood to see the set up for this year’s Festival of Speed and to have a look at the Moving Motor Show in action for the first time. We also – courtesy of Jaguar, who had invited us for the day – got an early drive up the hillclimb-based circuit that forms part of the Moving Motor Show’s appeal for the lucky ones who got the opportunity to take the wheel of one of the impressive bunch of cars on display.

And it was an impressive bunch, with everything from the Toyota Auris Hybrid to the Rolls Royce Phantom DHC via the Audi R8 and the new Jaguar XJ on offer to drive. And all in all it was a big success, although there was a dampner on the day when a Honda driver blacked out whilst at the wheel of a Mugen Civic and ploughed through the Jaguar stand, slightly injuring four visitors (and a historic E Type) in the process.

That melee shut the Ride & Drive Tent for a couple of hours and when it resumed there were no more cars mixing with pedestrians; which is probably how it should have been from the start. As it was in the morning, with a large marquee like structure with open end, car makers stands down the side and visitors and cars going to and returning from the drive mixing together in semi-organised chaos – the English way – was fine – barring incident.

But incident there was and it threw in to focus that maybe moving cars and visitors in big  numbers – despite it being the Festival of Speed way of relaxed interaction – needed a tweak. Perhaps – as it was later in the day – the two should be a little further apart.

But with lessons learnt from this year it’s sure to be onward and upward next year for the Moving Motor Show as visitors – around 30,000 of them –  and car makers were on the whole very positive about the day. We asked a few car makers for their thoughts about this inaugral Moving Motor Show and got some positive responses. Although we were surprised not to get feedback from Honda. We’d asked them the same questions as we did the other car makers, but also asked about their driver. But they had nothing to say.

Audi said the MMS was  “…a great innovation and [we] fully support the concept. After all, Audi cars are designed to be driven and what a great showcase!“. Mercedes were very bullish about the day,  but couldn’t resist pointing out that anyone interested in a Mercedes car can go to their very own Moving Motor Show at MBW Brooklands. They went on to say that “…our MMS cars were very busy all day yesterday,which was good – and five AMGs are always going to be popular!”

Rolls Royce were a little less effusive in their praise, preferring just to say that “… [the]moving Motor Show presented an innovative platform for Rolls-Royce customers to experience a selection of models from Phantom family to new Ghost on the famous Hill Route at Goodwood.” Maybe the punter we saw get a little out of shape coming on to the straight up towards the house had given them a few doubts!

As for Jaguar, who not only invited us as their guests, fed and watered us (nothing quite like bacon rolls, OJ and coffee for breakfast after a two hour drive), let us take a new XJ up the hillclimb route but had also sent us a new XJ for review for the week, they were very happy with the Moving Motor Show. They said “The entire Goodwood weekend, including the Moving Motorshow, was successful for lead generation and sales. We look forward to supporting Goodwood next year. We know that Goodwood are taking the incident on Thursday very seriously and we will assist with the analysis of the day as appropriate.”

By Cars UK