Goodwood 2015: Top gear and Top Gear

I say this every year but Goodwood Festival of Speed is the greatest motor show on earth. I stand by that and 2015 was no exception. If anything, Lord March raised the bar even higher, with faster, noisier and shinier metalwork on display than ever before.

I could list the brands, quote the celebrities, highlight the attractions but this is an audio visual extravaganza so what better way to illustrate this than the content my social feeds. I unleashed them all this year, from Twitter, Instagram and Vine to Periscope and Meerkat.

Mazda may have taken centre stage with this year’s Gerry Judah-designed sculpture on Lord March’s front lawn but for me there was another motor show encircling the event, pacing around in the shadows and threatening to derail my usual Goodwood visit. The show is question? Top Gear.

I can’t imagine the change of leadership at the flagship BBC show escaped the attention of many around the world (especially us petrol heads) but fewer are probably aware of the search for the final presenter line up. Chris Evens has thrown down the gauntlet to those with the passion, knowledge and drive (excuse the pun) to take up the second and third seats in this motoring behemoth.

This time last week, I was stood on a balcony outside a restaurant in Warsaw, with a dodgy mobile connection, no notes or timer, making a 30 second audition for the show on BBC 5 Live. The traffic providing the background noise should have been atmospheric. It wasn’t.

As you can probably tell, it didn’t quite go to plan thanks to the less-than-ideal circumstances and the fact the actual audition is meant to be a video. This aside, the professional speaking coach on the show thought I was too much of a geek, with no personality. Those who know me will probably agree with the geek analogy, however the personalty comment didn’t sit well with me. I make damn sure to put my heart and sole (and personality) into everything I do – especially when presenting so I’m not taking this one lying down.

30 seconds isn't long enough to tell the full story, such as my MG Montego talking car review at the age of 14, Sinclair C5 racing, an ownership history including a Citroën C6, Fiat Bravo and a Fiesta MkI (and the fast ones) and combining design, tech and vehicles at Brandwidth with a life-size holographic Toyota, a Lexus orchestra of cars (in the Top Gear studio), the first Apple Watch app for Porsche and a virtual reality X-Wing fighter! I even painted Tiff Needell's portrait – but that's another story. Fancy some more of this on Top Gear?

Here’s the video.

I’ll be a petrolhead until I die but to be honest, that includes vehicles of all forms of propulsion. Feast your eyes on the Festival of Fun…

Conceptual art

Motor manufacturers tend to wow us with breathtaking concepts years in advance of their roadgoing production models. When they finally arrive the wheels have shrunk, the lights have been simplified, the interior materials and form are usually unrecognisable from our first glimpse.

More importantly, however, is the fact that in many cases the defining moment, the first glimpse that made our jaws drop, has somehow been syphoned off and stored away for the next concept’s outing.

Other than a plethora of supercars that inevitably benefit from a combination of low volume and high list price, the model that stands out as a genuine concept to production reality is the original Audi TT. The latest version may well be a more accomplished package, dynamically and technically, but it does feel as if it has now had the corporate DNA grafted on in much the same way as an A8 is a larger A6 is a larger A4.

This brings me to the current state of the automotive industry and how it seems to be approaching the art of the concept car. Two heros stand out for me – Citroën for interiors and Mazda for exteriors. I’ll talk more about Citroën in a later post (when I have more news on the forthcoming DS range). For now, I’d like to concentrate on the strides made by Mazda over the past 3 years.

With the departure of design chief Laurens van den Acker to the post of Vice President of Renault Corporate Design, Mazda’s new Head of Global Design Ikuo Maeda has quite a legacy to uphold. The current inspirational series of concepts – Ryuga, Hakaze, Nagare, Kazamai, Furai and Taiki – were overseen by van den Acker after inheriting the post from Moray Callum (Jaguar Design Director Ian Callum’s younger brother).

Mazda’s design language ‘Nugare’ (Japanese for ‘flow’ and ‘the embodiment of movement’) takes its inspiration from the movement of natural forces such as wind and water, characterised by intricate surface panels that move BMW’s flame surfacing to a whole new level.

Beautiful textures enhanced by light and shade have taken cues from geological flow patterns, Japanese raked gardens, sand dunes and the natural flow of air. A mixture of highly polished and matt finishes, intricately carved LED lights and a colour palette that includes more than the customary white that seems to adorn most concept and production launches seals Mazda’s position as one of the automotive industry’s major design players.

So have any of these ground-breaking design cues found their way to Mazda’s range of production cars? The front grills are beginning to receive the angular treatent, as are the extended front wings. Anything else? Disappointingly not. Maeda San has a lot to live up to with his next concept but he has an opportunity to make a name for himself as the man who brought Nugare to the masses.