Tag Archives: Goodwood

Meet the Sir Peter Blake Pop Art car

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Bentley’s first pop art car is a playful collage of bright blue, yellow and pink with a bold red heart-shape at its centre, multi-coloured leather seats and pink gear leaver designed by Sir Peter Blake and created by the skilled engineers and artisan Mulliner team at the Crewe factory.

We are at the London auction house Bonhams to meet the pioneer of British pop art and witness the car’s debut. Based on the 200mph Continental GT V8 S Convertible, this Bentley by Blake is due to be auctioned off in June at the Goodwood Festival of Speed to benefit the charitable work of the Care2Save.

It took four months to conceive the car. Blake says candidly: ‘When I was first asked to do this car, in my mind I declined. I thought why mess up a perfect object. I tried to keep the dignity of the car, but also make it decorative.’

Initially Blake imagined a band of images wrapped around the car. ‘I wasn’t quite sure how the finish would be resolved – the process was far more complicated than I had imagined,’ he says.

So he reduced his design ‘We simplified and simplified and simplified it,’ he smiled, ‘so we ended up with these basic colours with a heart on the bonnet, and different colour leather seats in the interior.’

The bespoke St Luke’s Blue – created by Blake as homage to the carmaker’s Cheshire hospice – dominates the rear haunches, doors and boot lid, whilst the artist’s bold characteristic St James Red heart symbol is hand-painted on the yellow bonnet. There is a contrasting fuchsia pink radiator grille surround, with the lower body finished in British racing green.

Inside, each leather seat is trimmed in different shade of hides, with the colours echoed on the steering wheel topped with a pink leather gear lever. The storage cases feature a Piano Black veneer outer treatment with added yellow and red internal linings to reflect the bonnet colour theme. The ‘No. 1 of 1’ labelled treadplate signifies that this is a one-off Sir Peter Blake design.

Blake has also created a personalised playlist, all of which are tongue-and-cheek car themed – Pink Cadillac, Route 66, Drive in Saturday, Mustang Sally, Road to Nowhere, to name some – and, not surprisingly, includes a number of tracks by The Beatles for which he famously designed the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover.

‘I have enormous admiration for the people at Bentley who brought my design into being,’ says Blake, ‘and to produce this one-off lovely car. I am very excited to be seeing the car.’

Nargess Banks

Design Talks | The Textile Building | 29a Chatham Place | London | E9 6FJ | UK
Design Talks is published by Spinach Design
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Celebrating speed at Goodwood

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Speed. There is something at once modern, advanced, superhuman, and utterly sexy about it. It demands a visceral reaction. Speed is about pure emotion. These are now famous words coined by the controversial founder of the Italian Futurist movement F. T. Marinetti who wrote in the 1909 manifesto:

‘We declare that the splendour of the world has been enriched by a new beauty, the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath … a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire…’

Speed symbolises progress, and in the epoch of sustainability, it is perhaps not getting quite the glory it deserves. However, recent products such as the BMW hybrid i8 supercar have proved that you can have an environmentally caring product and still race like they did in the golden age of the automobile.

Last weekend we were at Goodwood Festival of Speed, the annual event that simply celebrates speed in its very rawest of forms. It is beautiful here, set deep in one of England’s most picturesque spots in West Sussex.

The famous Goodwood Hill sees drivers race to complete an uphill course – and it is quite spectacular watching the parade of exotic metal, as RAF Red Arrows perform some stunning air acrobatics over Goodwood House.

This is not a straightforward car show, and it certainly shouldn’t double up as an occasion for carmakers to exhibit their entire range. Sadly, increasingly this seems to be the case, which is why, it was exciting to see marques like Jaguar Land Rover embracing the spirit of the occasion.

The vast JLR pavilion positioned on a hill with great views over the festival blended with its surroundings, and the interactive display, including a Land Rover off road course, seemed to have punters excited throughout the event.

Goodwood saw the first sighting of the production version of the new F-Type Project 7, the 340ps, 3.0-litre XE S, and a selection of the company’s heritage automobiles including the XJ13, Group 44 E-type, Long Nose D-type, TWR XJS and Broadspeed XJ12C.

Jaguar also debuted the latest luxury XJ range and a special version XJR Rapid Response Vehicle (RRV) for Bloodhound SSC. The car has a spacious cabin and it’s 5.0-litre V8 550ps supercharged petrol engine takes it from 0-60mph in just 4.4 seconds and on to a top speed of 174mph – a bit like Marinetti’s machine gun.

This is the latest creation to come out of Special Vehicle Operations, a division within the company specialising in tuned versions of new and classic cars. If this all sounds a little 007, then we suspect this was intentional. As with Goodwood, half the charm of JLR is its association with all things quintessentially British.

‘These are specially developed cars for a very special purpose, showcasing SVO’s ability to design and engineer bespoke vehicles to the highest possible standards,’ says SVO managing director John Edwards, adding: ‘We’re proud to be playing a part in another great British land speed record attempt.’

Nargess Banks

Design Talks | 5 – 25 Scrutton Street | Old Street | Shoreditch | London | EC2A 4HJ | UK

Design Talks is published by Spinach Design

All rights and labelled images are covered by ©

 

Jaguar Project 7 at Goodwood

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‘We declare that the splendour of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed,’ F. T. Marinetti wrote in the 1909 Futurist manifesto. ‘A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath … a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire…’

Speed. There is something at once modern, advanced, sexy, almost superhuman about it – notwithstanding its usurping by Mussolini’s fascist movement having taken the manifesto as theirs. Speed symbolises progress, and in the epoch of sustainability, it is perhaps not getting quite the glory it deserves. I can never forget the sheer thrill of taking the Shanghai Transrapid, the magnetic levitation train and the word’s fastest at 268 mph. Your heart almost stops a beat or two.

The Goodwood Festival of Speed (26-29 June) celebrates speed in its rawest form. The annual hill climb sees drivers race to complete an uphill course – and it is quite spectacular watching the parade of exotic metal, as RAF Red Arrows perform some stunning air acrobatics over the picturesque Goodwood House in West Sussex, UK.

This was the ideal setting for Jaguar to reveal its latest production car, the F-type Project 7, a high-performance model and the production version of Project 7, a concept shown at Goodwood last year. Project 7 is a tribute to the Jaguar D-Type, which turns 60 this year. The racing car was produced between 1954 and 1957, featured an innovative highly aerodynamic monocoque construction and won the Le Mans 24-jour race on three occasions.

Project 7 will be made in limited numbers – only 250 have been promised so far. It has two seats, a simple removable fabric roof, and a distinctive asymmetrical hump at the rear. It has a lower windscreen than the F-Type on which it’s based and a carbon-fibre bodykit, which together with other innovative features, helps shed 80kg of weight. With 567bhp from a 5.0-litre supercharged V8 engine, Project 7 is the most powerful Jaguar road car.

It is the offspring of a newly created Special Vehicle Operations team. If it all sounds a little 007, then I suspect this was intentional. Half the charm of the brand is its association with all things British, the charming old school kind. The SVO team will be developing not only tuned versions of production models but also classic cars like the upcoming lightweight and super powerful special-edition E-type. And we cannot wait to put some of these to the test.

Nargess Shahmanesh Banks

Read our Jaguar reviews here, and about Jaguar’s installation at Clerkenwell Design Week 2014.

Design Talks | 5 – 25 Scrutton Street | Old Street | Shoreditch | London | EC2A 4HJ?W | UK 
Design Talks is published by Spinach Design

All rights and labelled images are covered by ©