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As Aston Martins, Ferraris and Porsches from the 1950s and 1960s roared round the historic racing circuit on his Goodwood estate last Friday, Charles Gordon-Lennox, 11th Duke of Richmond, greeted guests in a finely tailored tweed jacket and cravat. He did not look out of place: thousands of people were wearing vintage clothes.
This was the Goodwood Revival, a three-day event in West Sussex that has grown into a cult gathering for classic car enthusiasts and others who just enjoy dressing up and having fun. Among the 150,000 Revival attendees this year were the actor Richard E Grant and the comedian Rowan Atkinson, who drove his own 1943 Jaguar Mk VII in one of the races.
Along with the Goodwood Festival of Speed, a July event that features top racing drivers, the Revival is a fixture for both fans and carmakers such as Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, which is based on the 11,500-acre estate. Over three decades, these events have transformed Goodwood’s formerly shaky finances and turned it into one of the most business-like British stately homes.
“The amazing thing is, they all feel they are part of it, they are in the movie,” the Duke said of the attendees, who paid from £84 per day for entry, and more for grandstand access. That was the idea when he first set an ambition for Goodwood to become “the world’s leading luxury experience brand”. It is still a work in progress, but it attracts 100,000 international visitors a year.
Goodwood has always been associated with sporting competitions. It originated as the first duke of Richmond’s hunting estate in the late 17th century and has one of the country’s oldest cricket grounds. It has a well-known horseracing course and the motor racing circuit was first built by the duke’s grandfather Freddie on the perimeter of a Battle of Britain airfield.
The circuit closed in 1966 and it took some nerve for Gordon-Lennox to revive its motoring tradition in 1993 with the first Festival of Speed. He had taken over the estate from his father after working as a photographer, and found that “things were not as good as I’d thought. It was quite a shock, actually”. But he has his father’s entrepreneurial spirit: “He would always say, ‘Let’s go for it. We’ll make it work.’”
It is just as well that he tried. The Festival of Speed, followed in 1998 by the Revival, tapped into a desire among enthusiasts not just to see cars at shows, but to watch them in action and mingle with other fans. He argues that this was always the attitude of Goodwood’s sporting and gambling dukes: “We love doing this, but it’s no fun on our own so let’s get other people to come.”
Road racing is now vital to Goodwood: these events, including an annual meeting of 20,000 members and “fellows” of its racing club, brought £79mn in revenues and a £10.4mn operating profit in 2023. The racecourse made a small £1mn profit on revenues of £25mn, while the 4,000-acre organic farm lost £1mn. The estate, with its expensive upkeep and 700 employees, would be in trouble without cars.
Goodwood has kept expanding and now has an annual dog festival called Goodwoof. “We like doing quite mad things. Mad but also ‘Well, why not?’” says Gordon-Lennox, whose business precepts include “obsession for perfection” and “derring-do — the wow, sheer love of life”. He is not content with how far it has come: “We really want to grow. We have ambitious targets.”
But there is only so much that he and his management team can pack into one estate, and Goodwood is at a pivotal point in his quest to attain global luxury brand status. The question is whether it can spread beyond its boundaries and stage international events: it has many approaches to replicate the Festival of Speed at Formula 1 events.
Here, the 70-year-old duke’s ambition meets his sense of caution, based on a duty to hand over the estate in good shape to his heir Charlie March, who is working in New York as a venture capitalist. Goodwood has few global rivals apart from the Concours d’Elegance luxury car event in Pebble Beach, California, but he does not want to risk its finances or taint its name.
Caution is prudent. Although Goodwood is a fine brand, it could not just be licensed to a global live entertainment group. Any extension of its events would need the new venues to have similar resonance. Goodwood’s power lies in its history and estate, and the presence of the dukes of Richmond. You must be there to understand.
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