With the promise of probably more McLarens in one place than I’ve ever seen before there was no way I could decline an invitation to the Wilton House Classics and Supercar Event. Held at the quite frankly beautiful Wilton House, thanks to the patronage of Lord Pembroke, the event is a very hands on and close up festival of all things car shaped, rare, expensive and fast. Just walking in was an experience, looking initially like I was visiting a giant adventure playground (plenty there for the kids!) a quick glance right was enough to put my mind at rest with some wonderful 650S and 12C models – the later having had significant work on them performed by McLarens Special Operations unit – MSO is where the voodoo happens!
Now I’d like to put on record now that one day, an orange 650S Spider will be mine. It has got to happen somehow else my life will be incomplete, just look at it….
With the rain starting to come down a bit harder it was onwards towards a gaggle of hypercars, had no idea what to look at first…. Gumpert, Pagani, Ferrari, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Bristol, McLaren all represented with fine examples, the F1 later in the day winning honours for being perfection – I can’t disagree!
Before getting to the much talked about “Head to Head” display I took a wander around the extensive display of supercars brought out for the day by their kind owners. Just goes to show there are supercar owners that take them out in the rain and drive them, I find this reassuring when you think about the number stored in collections that do not see the light of day from one year to the next. Highlight for this car nut from the group was the 458 Speciale, I never thought anything could make an Italia look ‘dull’ but…
The Head to Head display was an interesting take on the traditional static display, old meets new. The classic vs the modern take is a hard one to judge, heart says classic most of the time but then head says modern as the classic, no matter how stunning, will inevitably drive like a dog. Never meet your heroes, or something like that springs to mind – anyway I let you make up your own minds… (it was raining quite hard at this point so the photography goes downhill!)
As the weather started to perk up, so did I – finding some German and Italian loveliness on the lawn
Not to be outdone by some good (not so)old British muscle!
The house and grounds are not bad either 🙂
Last few supercar shots… loving the M3 GTS, two of them out to play!
However, saving the best until last… the MC12. Stop the press, pure aggression….could have quite happily taken this home with me!
Congratulations to the Wilton House team for putting on a great day, despite the best efforts of the English weather to spoil things the crowds and owners were having none of it – certainly one for the calendar in 2015.