Video: Land Rover Revels In Damp FOS Beginnings

Britain’s biggest car producer has built a stand to reflect an extraordinarily successful portfolio of cars. Jaguar is now the fastest growing premium brand in the UK, with sales up more than 70 per cent on last year, aided by the Coventry Cat’s fastest growing car ever: the F-Pace SUV.

Land Rover, despite the absence of the Defender since it ceased production at the end of last year, is up 12 per cent in sales, against a market average of four per cent growth.

Here this year, then, ploughing up and down at the front of the stand, are the Discovery and Discovery Sport, Range Rover and Range Rover Sport, Evoque and Evoque Convertible, all wading through water and tipping over specially built precipices at angles that leave a wheel high and dry in mid air.

The squeal of tyres from round the back of the stand meanwhile reminds visitors that Jaguar has much to shout about, not least the F-Type SVR which Goodwood Road and Racing tested on track earlier this month. Special Vehicle Operations launched its first vehicle - the Range Rover Sport SVR - here at Goodwood this time last year and now it’s the turn of Jaguar, which gets a 200mph sticker to slap on its sports car.

“Goodwood is a perfect fit for us”, Scott Dicken, Marketing Director at Jaguar Land Rover UK, told us. “It’s something we’re very focused on; last year we had 85,000 people on the stand and 4,000 got in cars. We had about 2,500 strong leads to pass on to the retail network, so it’s a strong opportunity to sell cars.”

Sailing and tennis fans will be pleasantly surprised: the JLR stand also celebrates Jaguar’s partnership with Wimbledon via virtual-reality headsets that put you on centre court with Andy Murray. And the BAR America’s Cup partnership with Land Rover is represented digitally with a challenge to avoid capsizing the boat. The BAR Land Rover boat currently sits in second place, with the next round in Portsmouth next month, when the team will aim to be the first British team to win since the race began, back when Queen Victoria was on the throne.

You see: cars, sport and history all in one place. That’s Goodwood.