Currently reading: Picture special: 2011 Goodwood Festival of Speed

The Goodwood Festival of Speed 2012 opens its doors this weekend. We take a look back at last year's show

"Purists say there are no grades of perfection, but if they existed the 2011 Goodwood Festival of Speed would surely have moved the peg higher", is what we said of last year's show.

The event featured vehicles more strikingly diverse than ever, from hugely fast F1 turbo cars, via unbelievable electric cars to an awesome jet motorcycle.

The theme was ‘Racing Revolutions’, which is why extraordinary cars such as Parnelli Jones’s jet-powered Lotus 56 – an ‘almost’ Indy winner – were on hand. But the true hotbed of progress was the green-themed FoS-Tech centre, where the Nissan Leaf and Vauxhall Ampera rubbed shoulders with the Delta coupe and the Peugeot EX1, the closest thing to an electric rollerskate.

The event’s most-seen car was the Morgan 3 Wheeler – appropriate when you think about it. It might be all-new, yet it draws so much from the past. Just like the Festival of Speed.

Autocar will be reporting live from this weekend’s Festival of Speed. Stay tuned for the latest news and pictures from the event.

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Steve Cropley

Steve Cropley Autocar
Title: Editor-in-chief

Steve Cropley is the oldest of Autocar’s editorial team, or the most experienced if you want to be polite about it. He joined over 30 years ago, and has driven many cars and interviewed many people in half a century in the business. 

Cropley, who regards himself as the magazine’s “long stop”, has seen many changes since Autocar was a print-only affair, but claims that in such a fast moving environment he has little appetite for looking back. 

He has been surprised and delighted by the generous reception afforded the My Week In Cars podcast he makes with long suffering colleague Matt Prior, and calls it the most enjoyable part of his working week.

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