GOODWOOD & THE JOY OF HILLS

We love hill climbing. Simple format; there’s a track up a hill – you have to be quickest. Unlike gridded wheel-to-wheel racing, there are no tactics, no strategies available and no one to show you the way. It’s just a pure test of car and driver.
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If Colorado’s Pikes Peak is the ultimate Hillclimb, then Goodwood’s Festival of Speed (coming up this weekend) is a delicious tongue tip taster of the form. Every year a huge variety of vehicles — from priceless vintage cars and the latest in cutting edge Hypercar exotica to Rod Millen’s Pike Peak slaying Celica (above & Below) — gather on the lawn of Lord March’s elegant Sussex Estate.

I was lucky enough to witness this monstrous missile setting its record time a few years ago. Sometimes a vehicle can be so powerful it’s a little frightening to be near it.

This was such a car.

Not sure if Rod Millen will be at Goodwood this weekend – but rest assured it’s the highlight of the petrolhead year. And you should be there.
http://youtu.be/81DeYYK8Dtc

PIKES PEAK 1958

With the motorsport season finally upon us we can’t help but share with you this amazing little race car.
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Apparently, this open wheeled beast was the vehicle in which legendary US racer Bobby Unser won the 1958 Pikes Peak ‘race to the clouds’.

We’re not sure of much more spec or details on the vehicle itself – only that the thing looks like more fun than a barrel of drunken monkeys. At Christmas.

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Questons, for example include: is that a flathead V8? What kind of carbs are they? And what sorts of times would this machine have made up the hill?

Any info that you, dear readers, can afford, would be much appreciated.

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