Rule Britannia Sunday Breakfast Club preview | GRR
If someone gives you four days off in a row to join in with a national celebration, what do you do? Or more importantly, what do we at GRR do? Simple, gather together some of the best, coolest, and, at times, weirdest cars that the country has created. This is Rule Britannia Sunday!
Sunday (5th June) will see nearly a thousand cars from the shores of the UK descend upon Goodwood to top off the jubilee celebrations in probably the best way we know. Expect to see a stream of British legends snaking their way through the Sussex countryside, weaving their way across the South Downs, before gathering to pay tribute to Her Majesty at Goodwood.
As you might expect the list of cars attending is varied and eclectic. The UK’s car industry in the 21st Century might not be quite what it once was, but through its history it has produced some of the finest and most incredible cars the world has ever seen. From a plethora of small two-seater sportscars to off-roaders that keep half the world turning through rain and shine.
If you want a quick example of the kinds of variety you can see on Sunday a look down our list of accredited vehicles sees 1953 MG XPOWER SV-R, Jaguar E-Type, Noble M12 and Aston Martin Vanquish Zagato all within just a few lines of each other.
As you might expect, there’s a significant portion of the race track and paddocks set to be taken up by sportscars from MG, Triumph, Austin Healey, Jaguar and Lotus. These staples of the classic car world in Britain are still a lovely sight to behold whenever you see one on the roads, so to find so many together in one place will surely stir some patriotic fervour on this most British of weekends.
Supplementing them will be cars from Ford – yes, an American brand, but for so many years at the heart of the UK car industry with its own distinct UK arm – Rover, Vauxhall, Morris and Land Rover. The companies that provided Britain with its day-to-day workhorses may have been commonplace on tour roads, but their impact on our motoring landscape should not be underestimated.
At the more exotic end of the spectrum, you can expect to see many machines from Aston Martin’s Gaydon workshops as well as our close neighbours at Rolls-Royce and their former brethren from Crewe, Bentley. Relative upstart McLaren has seen such a meteoric rise in its decade-or-so of life as a regular production company that its machines take up a significant part of the line-up, while stalwarts including TVR and Morgan will be on show as well.
And we can’t forget the British bike industry. Perhaps not as significant in the history of Goodwood, Britain’s two-wheeled industry has led the world for decades, with Triumph, CCM and co all at the very top of the mortorcycle game. Expect to see a small, but significant, group of British bikes standing pristine on Sunday.
Finally, as a small treat, we are expecting five of perhaps the most British of ingenious failures – the Sinclair C5 – to arrive as a delightful display. These five machines could have been at the Queen’s Jubilee parade, but have elected to spend their day with you, our Goodwood public, to mark the day.
It’s going to be a brilliant morning, so make sure you get here early to see these machines arrive, and hang around for a bacon roll and a cup of tea (coffee is available, but it is a British weekend) to peruse one of the largest selections of cars we’ve ever had at a Breakfast Club.
Tickets for Rule Britannia Sunday are FREE and available now, click here for more info.
Photography by Pete Summers, James Lynch, Dan Farmiloe and Joe Harding.