Silver Sticker

If there's an event more exclusive than the Pebble Beach or Amelia Island Concours d' Elegance, it's probably the Goodwood Revival, at the race course of the same name in England.  They  all invite your car.  They encourage spectators to wear period costume.  The principal difference is that Pebble Beach and Amelia are for road cars and Goodwood is for race cars only.  Which makes it potentially even more exclusive.  You might expect a British event to be more snobby.  Not so: it's for gearheads, not art collectors.

Goodwood is an estate in West Sussex.  Before and after World War Two it was owned by the Duke of Richmond & Gordon ("Freddie Richmond" to his mates).  His career was in cars, racing and airplanes.  During the war, Goodwood was an RAF fighter base.  It dawned on Freddie that the airfield's perimeter roads could make a road racing circuit.  The course opened in 1948 and was the site of major British and international sports car races for 18 years.  Freddie closed the course in 1966, when he had become concerned about rising speeds and fatalities in racing.

In 1998, his grandson (the Earl of March), also a racing buff, reopened Goodwood.  Any race car, if it is authentic, can be just shown, or demonstrated on the hillclimb course.  Only cars made in 1965 or earlier are permitted to race on the road course.  So watching a race is like being in a time machine: the course hasn't changed, nor have the cars.  If you've seen these races on TV, you know they're races.  Like American vintage racing, contact is discouraged.  But the Brits race harder and closer.  Half the drivers are retired pros. Most of the amateurs are good.  Those who are merely competent stay out of the way.  Although short, Goodwood is a fast course.  It's a joy to watch cars with treaded tires in 4-wheel drifts through the fast bends.  That was the fast way around before racing slicks.

Cars accepted by the Goodwood Festival of Speed are given a silver sticker.  It's like passing tech at your local track.  Snob-appeal aside, the Goodwood silver sticker is prized.  If applicable, it can be your car's model number.  Invited cars wear them long after the event, back in their garages or museums.  It certifies that the car's provenance has been thoroughly researched and established.  It says the car's the real deal: exactly as purported to be.  If you're at a vintage event or in a museum Stateside and see one of these stickers, you don't have to wonder if the car is a replica, or a tribute, or an also-ran painted to look like the "famous" car.  It's the car.

Silver sticker #196 (over his shoulder) on Stirling Moss's 1955 British GP-winning Mercedes W-196.  Moss is pulling out of the paddock to demonstrate the car on the hillclimb course.

Silver sticker #302 on Allan Moffatt's 1969 Mustang Boss 302 (door).  He ran this car with great success in the Aussie Touring Car Championship into the early 1970's.  It's 1 of 7 road racing Boss 302's built by Bud Moore Engineering.

Silver sticker #956 (behind driver's helmet) on a factory-entered Porsche 956 Group C car from the 1980's.