I’ve been fortunate enough to cover the London Concours a number of times now but have never been to it’s larger sister event, Concours of Elegance at Hampton Court Palace, until now.
Like the London Concours, there were a lot of interesting cars displayed at this show, and to try to cram them all into one post just wouldn’t be fair. So I’m going to do a few posts covering this show, and as the Concours tickets also granted us access to the palace itself, I may do a post on that too as it was really interesting!
We’ll start with the supercars.
As soon as I entered the show I was greeted my four Koenigseggs. Two Regeras and two Ageras.
The green Agera S, the ‘Green Goblin’, has featured on this blog a few times and it’s always a pleasure to see it! It’s now boasting ‘Ghost Squadron’ stickers on the flanks. Ghost Squadron is an unofficial Koenigsegg club who do rallies and events with the cars.
The name Ghost Squadron refers to the little ghost character that can be found in all of Koenigsegg’s cars. Koenigsegg Automotive is based in a ex Swedish Air Force/F10 Scania Wing hanger at Angelholm airport.
The fighter squadron housed there were called Johan Rod (Juliett Red), who mostly flew at night. Because the locals would only ever hear their aircraft rather than see them, they got the nickname ‘Ghost Squadron’. The name stuck and the little ghost mascot was made. Koenigsegg uses the mascot to pay tribute to people of Juliett Red.
Moving on from that tangent – The Gordon Murray Automotive (GMA) T50 is really a celebration of Gordon Murray’s automotive design career.
The T50 features the same staggered 3 seat configuration as the McLaren F1, and the fan at the back, which sucks the car to the ground, is inspired by the Brabham/Alfa Romeo BT46B F1 car, both of which were designed by Murray.
The T50 is also designed to be as driver focused as possible. It’s incredibly light, weighing it at just 997KG, and power is supplied through a Xtrac six speed manual from a Cosworth built V12 which will rev from idle to 12,100 rpm in just 3/10ths of a second!
Some representatives of GMA spoke at the show and it was made clear that the car isn’t about breaking records or pushing huge power figures, it’s just about putting a smile on the driver’s face. Which is what a sports car should do at the end of the day.
The aforementioned McLaren F1. With this and the T50 being three seat you’d expect them to be quite wide, but both cars are surprisingly small.
Lamborghini were represented by a myraid of cars including the first modern super car, the Lamborghini Miura.
These were normally painted in bright colours like lime green, orange and red. I really like the silver on this one. It makes it look very understated.
The Reventon was a limited production car based on the Murcielago and inspired by the F-22 fighter jet.
I fell in love with these playing Need For Speed: Shift back in the day. It was really cool to finally see one in person.
The Revuelto is the successor to the Aventador. It has a 6.5 litre V12 reinforced by 3 electric motors giving it a total power output of 1001hp. It’s a bonkers looking thing too!
The Filippo Perini designed Lamborghinis (Aventador, Huracan and Veneno specifically) are in my opinion the golden era of Lamborghini. The cars that replace them are probably going to take me a while to win me over. I do like the Revuelto but it’s not there yet for me haha!
From Lamborghini’s long time rival Ferrari we have the SP8 from Ferrari’s One-Off series.
A convertible Roma.
The 812 Competizione Aperta. I love front-engined V12 Ferraris from the 1950s up to the present day. I hope they can continue to keep making them.
This Enzo was surprisingly the only car from the “Big 5” at the show.
The SP1 and SP2 are throwbacks to the Ferrari sports cars of the 1950s and early 1960s. The SP1 is a single seater whereas the SP2, shown here, has two seats.
Aston Martin’s DBR-22 from the ‘Q’ personalisation program is another car that was built to celebrate that era of motorsport. I’d have both this and an SP1 if I could. I’d need to do a lot of overtime at work though!
There was also a Valkyrie. I first saw the AMR Pro track only version at Salon Prive London a couple of years back and it absolutely blew my mind. They still do! I think these are absolutely phenomenal things. Hopefully I can see one in motion some day.
This Pagani Zonda is the ‘Oliver Evolution’. It’s a one off modified Zonda named after the owner’s son.
The interior was trimmed by Parisian fashion house Hermes. In later years Hermes would also work with Pagani and property entrepreneur Manny Khoshbin to create a one off Huayra.
The Bugatti Veyron is the first in the line of the brand’s modern hypercars. I personally think that they’ve aged really well.
The Alfa Romeo 8C is a car that I’ve never actually seen in person before. 500 Competizione coupes, like this one, were built along with 329 Spiders.
It’s incredibly good looking, as one would expect of an Alfa Romeo sports car.
A lovely Porsche 918.
The TVR Cerbera Speed 12. For a little context this weighs between 1100-1200KG which is about the same as a Mk7 Ford Fiesta, but has a 7.7ltr V12 producing somewhere between 800-960bhp, which is around 10 times the power of a 1.2 Fiesta.
It is claimed the car will do 0-60 in 2.9 seconds and has a top speed of 240mph.
As far as I’m aware this is the only road-going one. At the time TVR’s CEO Peter Wheeler said the car was too powerful and too wide for public use.
GVE London, who I follow on TikTok had a Porsche 911 GT3RS and a Lexus LFA on display.
The LFA is, in my opinion, the best sounding road car ever produced. Uner load the V10 is just glorious!
We’ll end with something a little bit different. The Porsche 911 Dakar is a limited run of modified 911s built in tribute to the 953 – a heavily modified four wheel drive 911 that won the 1984 Paris-Dakar Rally.
These are brilliant. Despite the off-road modifications they still go, handle well and are comfortable like a normal 911 but have the capability to cross rough ground. Given the state of some of the roads in the U.K it’s probably a very good daily car!
Thanks for joining me on the first part of my Concours of Elegance coverage. Part 2 looking at the golden era coupes is now live: https://motorsportformentalhealth.com/2024/09/11/concours-of-elegance-2024-golden-era-coupes/
Part 3 is also live! This one covers the racing cars of the show: https://motorsportformentalhealth.com/2024/09/14/concours-of-elegance-2024-racing-cars/
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By Richard Francis
Such an amazing collection of super cars.
Very interesting the Ghost Squadron story, I really enjoyed it.