Every September, some of the greatest names in motorsport descend upon a small track in England. They come for the Goodwood Revival, a vintage-race weekend that attempts to reawaken the sport's heady past. Polite dress is required in the paddock. Warbirds take off from the infield. And the cars are invite-only, as significant as they come.

But the show is the main draw. The Revival has been called the world's best vintage race, but also the only real one: Cobras and 250 GTOs sliding inches apart. Modern touring-car stars hammering Cortinas. And thanks to a ferociously unforgiving track, palpable risk. Tickets sell out annually.

In 2015, editor-at-large Sam Smith raced in the Revival with Jaguar Heritage. He qualified on the front row at a track he'd never seen, in a 64-year-old car he'd barely driven, a brilliant result. The details are the stuff of dreams.

Richard Pardon

GARY PEARSON'S SHOP IS IN A METAL BARN BEHIND HIS house. That house is in a field, and that field is nestled outside Coventry, down a farm road lined with hedges. On the day I visited, the area smelled of manure.

Pearson's shop did not. It smelled like old Jaguars, plus a BRM F1 car and a Porsche 917, and that's not half of what was there the day I walked in. The Goodwood Revival was days away, and a silver 1951 Jaguar XK-120 sat out front. That car was mine, at least temporarily, for Goodwood. Pearson prepared it. I'd never driven a 120, so we met. I got 15 minutes on public roads. I'd be lying if I said it was enough to feel confident.

Of course, few drivers are confident at the Revival. You don't just sign up; you have to be invited, a process that was described to me as "getting into Hogwarts." The cars are so critical to the show, they're said to occasionally be asked free of driver. (Translation: "Please come. Wouldn't it be great if someone else railed on your stuff?") All of which is to say that any human in one of the event's 14 weekend races is lucky. And attached to a fantastic, history-steeped car.

Richard Pardon

Which the Jag is. The XK was bought new by England's R. J. "Ronnie" Hoare, the proprietor of famed Ferrari dealer Maranello Concessionaires. It's currently owned by Australian Rory Johnston, who was kind enough to lend it to R&T.

Like any 120, Johnston's car was a stunning cross between manor house and the prime real estate of a woman's birthday suit. The fenders were a sine wave. The interior appeared to have been laid out for laughs: tach in front of the passenger, and a horn button made large for no apparent reason, except to resemble one of Mae West's … horn buttons.

Outside Pearson's, R&T photographer Richard Pardon, a Brit, nudged me in the arm.

"Quite a thing."

I looked over. "You guys must have a law or something, right?"

"For what?"

"Cars like this. Home soil."

"Huh?"

"It feels like empire. Like I'll be deported if I light it off without a shotgun and a butler."

Pearson, 55, first went to the Revival 13 years ago. When we met, he wore jeans, a shop apron, and faded Vans, calling to mind a Keebler elf raised by Tony Hawk. A quiet demeanor belied years of Goodwood success, often in a Jaguar.

"The weekend hasn't changed much," he said. "That's the magic—the same thing every year, it never gets old. I don't know how they do it."

I asked about power, shift points.

"The car goes all right." A shrug. "Shift at six. Drive to the drum brakes, which don't really work. And it's a proper track." (I love how the Brits use "proper" as the ultimate compliment. Everything from good tea to the Lancaster bomber.) "Not much runoff, fourth-gear corners. But no pressure."

I glanced at the Jag's cockpit. "No roll bar?"

"Doesn't matter, since you're not going to crash it, eh?" A wink.

Richard Pardon

Outside Pearson's gate, the 120 felt heart-stoppingly wide. It had waterfalls of torque, but also a slow, woolly steering box and a four-speed manual that required the patience of Job. Maybe 250 hp. Plus other period quirks.

"That thing," I said to Pearson, after returning, "where you hit undulating pavement at the right frequency, and the left front wheel's doing one thing, and the right another—it shook like a wheel was coming off. My eyes lost focus. Is that normal?"

"Oh, yes." An impish smile. "And that's a good one."

That night, lying in bed, I thought a lot about fourth-gear corners and roll bars. Then I decided, very clearly, to not.

HERE'S THE THING ABOUT THAT ROLL BAR: It's missing partly because, until the early 1960s, most race cars weren't required to have rollover protection. This is in keeping with the spirit of Goodwood, which aims to present a polished view of the sport's most innocent era, prior to the arrival of corporate sponsorship.

The approach includes touches like costumed actors, period signage, and dress codes. But the bar is also absent because—and this is where you have to applaud Europeans for being themselves—it would be ugly. Bolting a fat rollhoop onto a 120's cascading steel qualifies as art defacement, even if it's thoroughly sane and could save someone's life.

The risk is offset, and maybe encouraged, by what makes Goodwood special. For one thing, it is the property of 60-year-old Lord Charles March. His family founded the track in 1948; it was mothballed in 1966 on safety concerns, then restored in the 1990s for the first Revival. There's no catch fencing, plenty to hit, and little more than short berms to catch uncontrolled cars. Goodwood is where Stirling Moss had his career-ending accident. Bruce McLaren died there, in a Can-Am car. Even in modern iron, it is not a place where you want to go off.

Richard Pardon

I glanced at the Jaguar's cockpit. "No roll bar?"-- "Doesn't matter, since you're not going to crash it, eh?"

And so the Revival exists with a certain amount of assumed risk, more than most vintage racing. Plus famously close competition. YouTube and TV coverage show a cutthroat, drifty street fight that makes contemporary motorsport seem stuffy. Credit European historic racing in general—more aggressive than its American counterpart—and the fact that Revival 'shoes run the gamut from local champs to F1 stars, mostly in cars with big power and low-grip, treaded, bias-ply tires.

But the show is unique, and it's helped Goodwood become more than just a renaissance fair for car people. You get the feeling that the organizers are consciously spurning something. As if the period drag was merely an offshoot of a greater goal.

All of this rolled around my head the day after we visited Pearson. I was standing in Jaguar's Whitley engineering center, in front of three new, aluminum-bodied 1964-spec Jaguar E-type Lightweight race cars. I came to Whitley to meet them, a trip that included Jaguar's heritage garage, in the Browns Lane plant where E-types were first made.

The Lightweights are part of Jaguar's recent effort to "reclaim" its heritage. Six cars are being produced, augmenting the 12 that the factory built in the Sixties. It's a PR exercise, Jaguar trumpeting its past like no other automaker can, but the timing is interesting. The move almost feels like a delayed reaction to the policies espoused when Ford owned the company, from 1990 to 2008. ("The bastards wanted to sell the historic collection outright," an insider told me. "If we hadn't put it in a state trust, they would have hawked everything.") Or maybe it's just Tata, Jaguar's current owner, reminding people what it bought.

Richard Pardon

E-type bodies are built in-house, hand-riveted from digital scans of originals. The finished products cost more than $1 million apiece (still less than an original Lightweight) and sold virtually upon announcement. They are a jaw-dropping embodiment of the Jaguar ethos that emotion can trump anything. Also the idea that good old things are virtuous not because they're old, but because they're inherently good.

Remember that the E-type and XK-120 came from Jaguar's greatest era. From 1951 to 1957, the marque won Le Mans a whopping five times. In 1949, with the XK-120, it built the world's fastest production car when most of Europe was rubble. Amazingly, each of those achievements used the same basic engine: the twin-cam XK straight-six, which powered the 120, the E-type, and the first XJ6, among others.

Amazingly part two, in Jaguar's golden age, most of the firm's accomplishments were engineered by a handful of men. One, Norman Dewis, is still alive. Prior to retirement in 1985, he helped develop everything from the first reliable racing disc brake (a Jaguar achievement) to the chassis of nearly every Jaguar after 1952. He raced at Le Mans. He set a speed record (172.4 mph, in 1953) in an XK-120 on a Belgian highway. He is a certain kind of royalty.

Dewis is 95, but he goes to the Revival every year. Jaguar reps suggested I camp with him, in an RV near the track. They also suggested I take an F-type press loaner and go somewhere during the one day in country that I had free, in the week before Goodwood.

Richard Pardon

The car turned out to be a white, 550-hp, all-wheel-drive V-8 R roadster. It went like bejesus, so I convinced Pardon that we needed to bejesus over to Belgium for a day. We took the Chunnel, driving onto its train in Folkestone. While waiting in one of the cars, I had a short chat with a friendly old British man in an MG sedan:

Man: "Fine car. You're young. What do you do, sell drugs?"

Me: "No."

Pardon: "He's from America."

Man: "So you're over here selling drugs?"

Pardon: "No, the car's just white."

Me: "I really have nothing to do with drugs."

Man: "Jaguar's a good car, then."

Inexplicably, a version of this conversation occurred at almost every British gas station I visited. When I asked Pardon about it, he just shrugged, as if it were normal.

Nor can I rationally defend the F-type's appeal. The steering is slick but far from talkative. Interior finish could be better. The eight-speed automatic embodies the car: It doesn't always do what you want, but after a few miles, I stopped caring. Maybe because I spent too much time gazing into the front fenders.

Richard Pardon

Dewis set his record near Jabbeke, 14 kilometers from Bruges. There's a commemorative plaque on the N377 road at the edge of town. We reached it after a 50-minute blitz from the French Chunnel port in Calais. Pardon climbed out of the car and knelt to read.

"Hell! One seventy-two! Norman Dewis got balls."

I rattled off a list of the man's accomplishments.

"So, he's far cooler than you, then."

"Yes, Richard."

"Not that it'd take much."

"Be quiet, Richard."

I looked at Dewis's face. He wore goggles. The day before, at Browns Lane, I spotted an XK-120 on a lift. Its wheels were off, exposing slender drums, a solid rear axle, and a ladder frame.

It's cliché, but the sight reminded me of blacksmithing. Conveniently, and perhaps predictably, a man was working underneath, hammering on some hidden part with a mallet. The sound rang through the shop as we left, echoing into the rafters.

Richard Pardon

HE ARRIVED IN A SUIT, the day before qualifying. Gray wool, with a string tie and suspenders. Didn't look a day over 70. His white hair was neatly combed. In idle moments, he whistled big-band tunes.

"Yeah," Dewis said later, over drinks, "you should have a roll bar. 'Course, in my day, we didn't. But then, I rolled a C-type, I rolled a D-type, and the only reason I survived is because I'm small. Ducking into the cockpit."

I asked if it felt weird to have people romanticize your life.

"Oh, I don't know. I first raced here in 1952. Last one was 1955, in the nine-hour, when I finished fifth. I liked big, fast circuits—Reims, Spa. When we were doing this, the crowds weren't such a big deal. Now it's all money."

"The track layout," he added, "is identical. The foam chicane wall"—built in the Fifties, to keep spinning cars off pit road—"was brick. But identical."

He was a font of stories. The best are unprintable. The shortest took six sentences: "How fast did we go at Le Mans? In '55, I did 192 down the Mulsanne. A D-type, 6200 rpm. I remember passing another man at night, engines in and out of phase. Enough time side by side for the fella to scowl at me. I waved, because it seemed to wind him up." And then he cackled softly into a glass of gin and said more unprintable things before segueing into a tale about almost getting kicked off the original Mille Miglia because the Italians had never seen disc brakes and thought they were trickery.

It is pretty much impossible to dislike Norman.

Richard Pardon

Late Thursday, I wandered over to the annual drivers' cricket match, on the lawn of Goodwood House, March's ancestral home. The match ends with a driver's meeting, where stewards stress propriety. Despite the event's bent-fender reputation—from Minis to Ferrari GTOs—recklessness is clearly abhorred. As a deterrent, they showed silent footage of crashes.

"At Goodwood," March said, "more than any other track, it is absolutely vital to not go for that last-minute pass, the one that puts everyone at risk. I say this every year, but our future is in your hands. We've been very lucky. We have a massive accident, and it's probably all over."

I'd be lying if I said this sort of thing hadn't stuck in my mind for weeks. Along with the rootless possibility that one of the Jag's suspension bits would break, send the XK rolling, and leave my children fatherless because of some stupid devotion to Art and Beauty on some English estate they'd never heard of.

I wrote a long, wine-drenched email to my dad that night, rambling. Years of club racing, and my safety was always a constant. How many people would still take a flag if the consequences were … closer?

I thought about things and felt worse. Then, illogically, better, as if worrying the problem had solved something. Lying in bed the night before qualifying, I flipped through pictures of the Jaguar on my phone. The car looked heartbreakingly beautiful and risky. For reasons I can't explain, it suddenly seemed unforgivable to go through life without a few beautiful, risky moments.

Richard Pardon

THE FIRST MORNING CAME EARLY. It came early because I forced it, shambling out of bed with a wine hangover (British campgrounds are friendlier than you'd expect) at 5:45. Fifteen minutes later, I was bicycling the track on a borrowed 1950s cruiser, watching the sunrise. It felt necessary, since I'd never driven at Goodwood; each Revival race gets a dual-purpose practice/qualifying session of just 15 minutes.

Even at rest, Goodwood is astonishing. Early morning gave it silence and the glow of a hundred pastels: pea-green grass and fresh white paint, cream in the light. A fleet of vintage Land Rovers, olive and dirty, squatting in the infield. The bike's pedals gave an occasional squeak. The noise felt criminal.

Later that morning, the place buzzed. Tweed was everywhere, and the air carried the sweet reek of methanol. Wartime jeeps shuttled people between parking lots. I saw a small boy eating a bacon sandwich; when I asked, he pointed to a stand selling them, each one wrapped in a reprint of a postwar newspaper. When I paused at a crosswalk for a guy in a suit on a Harley-Davidson, two Austin Sevens followed, holding bob-haired women in dresses. The dawn lit them up like fireworks.

Qualifying was at 11:00. As I walked to the Jaguar, a flash of camouflage darted overhead. In wartime, Goodwood's grass infield served as an RAF landing strip, so the Revival brings out Spitfires. Also P-51s and Hawker Hurricanes, in numbers uncommon since Hitler was vertical. They fly constantly, low enough to spit at. The sound defied description.

Outside the driver's club, I stepped around multitime Le Mans winners Tom Kristensen and Emanuele Pirro, together in a fedora-topped powwow. Le Mans, Daytona, and Sebring winner Andy Wallace told me where to find coffee. Former Ferrari F1 driver Gerhard Berger ambled around in jeans and sneakers, ignoring the paddock dress code, because that's apparently what you do when you're Gerhard Berger.

Richard Pardon

Later, in the mess hall—an enormous tent made up to resemble a World War II pilot's club—I ran into my friend Mark Gillies. Gillies, a former editor at Car and Driver, races a 1934 ERA, a single-seater with 250 hp, short wire wheels, and no seatbelts. He's won at Goodwood six times.

"It's the best race meeting in the world," he said, "if you like fast corners. But you really have to slide the car. The ERA averages a 97-mph lap or something—10 mph faster than almost anywhere else it runs. One-thirty at points. The thing about bias-ply tires—they take a bit of yaw."

I boggled. Then I had eggs with Richard Attwood, one of the drivers who gave Porsche its first overall Le Mans win, in 1970, in a 917K. He just came over and sat down. He seemed friendly, so I didn't mention having read about his life since I was 12, when I totally thought we'd be best friends.

"When I was younger," Attwood said, "I would come and watch here, outside Woodcote. See the cars coming off the straight, drifting the whole way." I boggled again, this time directly into a cup of coffee, so as not to make a ruckus.

That silver hood stretched out for weeks. It was like living a movie."

After a stint where the Jaguar just plain refused to be intimidating, I qualified on the front row. Third place, behind British journalist Chris Harris, in a Porsche 356. Even more surprising, I somehow forgot about the absent roll bar, except when I didn't. Usually in a full-throttle slip inches from the grass, when the idea would pop into my head in a panicky burst.

But the car never gave reason for doubt. On Goodwood's glassy pavement, the Jag was creamy. Unsurprisingly, Gillies was right: The tires seemed to thrive when the car was castering. The car hiked up its skirt, drifting in dignified dabs. The track became a string of arcs, one control input at a time—anything more, and the Jag would just bind up and wait for an apology. So I'd head into a corner at full tilt, barely braking, the body shifting on its mounts. The frame seemed to perceptibly twist. The steering column would move a little, after which I'd brace my leg off the transmission tunnel, gripping the wheel to keep from flopping around the cockpit. (There was a four-point harness on the stock seat. It felt superfluous.)

All this in an instant, balancing throttle and traffic, doing what you do in a normal qualifying session. Because that's what it was, just more ballet.

Afterward, I parked in the paddock next to two other 120s. As a group, they looked like Spec Prom Dress, or maybe tea carts prepped for war. I ran into Harris, who has driven a host of fast cars around Goodwood. We chatted about the track's ability to make you think. Not always usefully, I offered.

"And yet, I kind of want to try something quick here."

He looked me in the eye.

"No," he said. "No, you don't."

Richard Pardon

POMP, FLAGS. A jumbo TV screen behind the starter's stand, showing the broadcast feed. On the grid, I watched it pan to a silver Jaguar and white helmet.

I tilted my head. The helmet tilted. I waved. Amazingly, the goofus in the car waved back. On the parade lap, the goofus watched a U.S.-liveried dive-bomber buzz the cars on final approach. He might have yelled into his helmet, just random joy noises, waiting for something to break the mold.

And then, naturally, he botched the start.

Like most European road races, Goodwood uses standing starts. I popped the clutch at four grand, left hand on the shifter. The wallet-sized rearview mirror filled with tire smoke. It's cliché to call engines animal, especially in a car named for a cat. But the cacophony of that start: animal.

Crowds filled the periphery. Goodwood sells 50,000 tickets for each of the Revival's three days. Madison Square Garden holds fewer people.

I relaxed my right foot, and the car shot forward. Harris and the pole sitter, a green Jaguar, were a car-length ahead.

Breathe, I thought. Shift into second.

Shift into second?

Richard Pardon

Shift into second where is second the lever's in the right place the box is balking car coasts an eternity passes don't rush it XK gearboxes are known for slow blip try blip blip try seriously you old crate what did I ever do to you wait God thank you second gear GREAT SUCCESS …

… and there I was, ripping down the front straight in seventh place, four grid spots gone. The two rows behind were now ahead, having parted around the Jag like a school of fish. The rest of the grid loomed aft.

I ground my teeth, raging at myself. But also at an XK ahead, a black one that started seventh. Gibberish blew through my head like confetti.

Who does he think he is? Driving! In … a car!

The pack pounced into Turn 1, feinting and dicing. The Jag no longer felt old. Just a race car, asking very specific questions. So I shifted again and began laughing, because for a moment, I was almost unhappy.

How stupid.

I drove. I drove and drove, bit in my teeth, until the tires got hot and the car grew loose. Then looser still, up on step and dancing. Until the brake pedal grew firmer because I was using it less. Until I passed one car, then more. Chopped nearly a second off my fast lap. The track felt like an infinite ribbon.

I caught him. Then a blur of laps. The black 120 was visibly more loose, a touch quicker in a straight line but slower in the corners. The driver's shoulders leaned with the car, and on right turns, I could see his elbows dancing. A Lotus Six dove past under braking, so short it was hidden by my car's fenders. I was lapping faster than the other Jag but couldn't pass him, so I went patient. Thinking, dodging, trying options. That silver hood stretched out for weeks. It was like living a movie.

And so I should have been distraught, one lap later, when the head gasket blew. Nine minutes into the race. Spitfires kept flying. Car coughing, I darted into the pits. A camera crew rushed over. Across the front straight, the Jag filled another screen.

"It's using coolant," Pearson said.

I climbed out and watched the field rip by. As I turned and began walking back to the paddock, something made me pause.

Stay, a voice in my head said, because you can.

Richard Pardon

I reversed and leaned against the pit wall until race end, when I helped push the 120 back to its stall. I gave its flank a gentle pat. Less than half an hour of total seat time, and goodbye still made my throat tight. Funny how that works.

The rest of the weekend was a benevolent fog. A sea of Pimm's Cups. Getting lost in Goodwood's pop-up village, a 1960s town with a working grocery. Sideways Cobras three-wheeling through Woodcote. The stands still packed at 4:30 on Sunday.

I've never been to a race weekend where people stuck around for every last minute of what went on.

Entropy may undo the Revival in our lifetimes; unlike the eras it salutes, the event has a model for its fate. But that throws no shade on the glory, or the fact that progress rarely feeds a romantic. It has nothing to do with nostalgia or primitive cars and everything to do with what we love and why.

So go. Mortgage a kidney, sell your pets, just get there. And I will go back as a spectator, on and on, until the lawyers end it or society collapses and the oil runs out. Because that is what you do, when you find something amazing—you squeeze the juice from it until reality drags you away. Until all you're left with is the fog of memory. That goofus on the grid, waving at himself. And the sound of Spitfires overhead, unmatchable to words, fading, like any other dream.

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