Gearhead Smorgasbord: The Goodwood Festival of Speed

We are blessed to live in a time when nearly anywhere in the world can offer up a pretty enticing calendar of automotive events. However, there are certain special gatherings that really truly are unique and capable of popping the circuits clean out of your average automotive enthusiast. The Goodwood Festival of Speed held on the grounds of the Goodwood Estate in the Sussex Downs region of England is one of those flat-out amazing events.

The Festival of Speed is the brainchild of the current Earl of March, Charles Gordon-Lennox who is a massive gearhead. The Earl put together the first Festival 20 years ago as an effort to provide a venue for car fans to see rare and significant cars in action and also up close. The first event saw a fairly small amount of cars on the roster, but the concept was proved sound when 25,000 people show up to enjoy a day in the English countryside. The Festival has now grown in provenance and popularity to the point that it sells out every year with 150,000 souls through the gate and the line up of cars, drivers, manufacturers, and teams reflects the top echelon of the automotive worlds. The auction held on Thursday during the event by Bonhams even managed to net the highest ever sale price for a single car when Juan Manuel Fangio’s Mercedes racer crossed the block with a final hammer of nearly twenty million pounds. The Earl also hosts the Goodwood Revival in the fall which is dedicated to vintage races and other period activities, but the Festival is open to all eras of sporty cars.

 
To really appreciate how huge this event is you need to take a survey of all the different types and eras of cars and motorcycles that show up. I managed to see modern and vintage Formula 1 cars driven by world champion drivers from five decades, drag racing cars and bikes, versions of the world’s fastest sports cars from the earliest to the modern day, rally cars from many different eras racing through a forest stage, a great selection of competition motorcycles, and other significant cars up close and personal with only a stack of hay bales separating fans from the racing surface or with no separation at all in the paddock.

 The event also included huge multi story outdoor displays from all the major auto manufacturers, an airplane display area, flyovers by Vulcan and Typhoon war planes, and paddocks full of interesting things to look at. As noted above, Bonhams holds an onsite auction on Thursday where you can take home a very nice souvenir if you can swing it. There is even a “moving motor show” on Friday where ticket holders can try out the latest offerings from dozens of manufacturers on test drives around the estate.

To try and describe everything I saw would take pages and pages of droning on, so I will let the pictures and video below do the talking. If you truly love sports and competition cars, you need to find a way to make it to this event at some point as it is truly nirvana for gearheads. There are many fine tour companies that organize all-inclusive trips (I used Grand Prix Tours www.gptours.com) so save some bucks, block off a week to head over the pond, and prepare to have your mind completely blown when you visit the FoS in 2014.

 
Video can be found by clicking here

 

 

 

Clementine: Kid in a Candy Store

Many years ago, someone coined the term the “Go-Fast Crack Pipe” to give a name to the horrid obsession that grips racers in the quest to always go faster no matter the cost. One of my favorite authors Peter Egan once said that “(r)acing makes heroin addiction look like a vague wish for something salty”.

As I have been poring over issues of Hot VWs, Volksworld, and countless posts on The Samba trying to plan the path for my build of Clementine, that same old feeling of wanting to feed the need for speed is back in my blood. Turns out that there is way more cool stuff to throw at your Beetle than there was in 1988 and the state of the art is pretty impressive yet remarkably affordable when compared to my days trying to campaign two racecars in competitive amateur series. I probably will be able to get away with the full build minus bodywork for less than I spent on tires for my AIX Mustang “White Lightning” in one season. Sheesh.

Of course in order to get your hands on the good stuff, you need a reliable quality dealer who will get you only the best uncut finest grade hop-up parts. Although I have bought a few things from my local Bug shop to address some small problems, I needed to find someone to advise me on the critical parts of making Clementine go faster, turn with authority, and stop reliably. After some reflection, I decided to engage Jeff Lain from the Kaddie Shack in Pasadena, Calif. (www.kaddieshack.com) to be my guru for all things Beetle.

Jeff and I connected a few years back when I found my high school friend Tonia on Facebook. Turns out she is married to Jeff and she shared that he is as sick on Beetles as I am but even more so. While I am only up to one Käfer in the backyard, he has four including one that he has had since he was 19 years old. Jeff and I met up at the Sacramento Bugorama two years ago and I always had his shop in the back of my mind as where I would turn when I finally got a Beetle of my own.

Jeff started the Kaddie Shack a little over three years ago as a service to rebuild and tune the Kadron (“Kaddie”) carburetors that were standard issue on VW’s during the 1950’s and 1960’s. The business kept growing so Jeff decided a year ago to open a shop in Pasadena and he is now up to five employees and has an impressive volume of business based on the calls he was fielding and the walk-in business when I visited recently. The shop is a bit small but carries a full line of parts including ready to go carburetors, fully built engines, as well as suspension, brake, interior and body bits.

With the grand plan in mind, I headed down to Pasadena to meet with Jeff and also get a demo ride in the Kaddie Shack race car that I saw up in Sacramento at Bugorama running high 13-sec quarter mile times which is around where I wanted to end up with Clementine until we go full race. Jeff’s key man Miguel owns the ’62 shop car and he took me for a ride around Pasadena to show me the wholesome virtue of the motor and also demonstrate the sort of sauce it was packing. To be clear, this is a real racer with license plates and not a slammed “waxer” show car. There is no carpet, no sound deadening, and the car is ready to rock on the street or the track at a moment’s notice. However, despite the noise level the car was very well behaved. It was an easy 90 degrees out when we took our ride and the car idled like a champ, had zero flat spots off the line, and did not show a hint of overheating or stalling while we put it through the paces. I was sold so as soon as we got back, Jeff and I laid out a game plan for a 1968cc twin of Miguel’s motor using an aluminum case that came in on trade and perhaps with a few deviations to accommodate the primary street mission of this engine. This is Miguel’s ’62 along with its very capable pilot after our ride.

The next part to sort out was getting some reasonable brakes and suspension under Clementine so that she would not be a menace to drive with triple the stock power on board. Jeff and I talked over a few strategies and settled on 2.5-inch drop spindles with Karmann Ghia style discs up front as well as a new front suspension beam narrowed an inch with height adjusters to allow me to dial in the ride height to where it needs to be. Adjustable rear suspension arms in the back with new stiffer bushings with let me drop the back end a bit and I will fit new shocks all around to replace the roasted and leaky units still on the car. Here you can see all the goodness crammed into the shop with Jeff manning the phones as well as the guys out back stuffing a rebuilt motor into a ’69 that was in for a transplant.

So, things are coming along quickly and the next task will be to get the stock beam out of the car so Jeff can work his magic on it. After that, it’s time to yank the 1600cc engine and clean up the engine bay in preparation for the new bullet. Fun times and you can almost see the old girl smiling as she contemplates her return to the street ready to tear up some tarmac.