I grew up in Bolton. Not something I normally brag about, but relevant for the incidental fact that the town is twinned with Le Mans. And that small, improbable detail gave me all the excuse I needed to spend a significant chunk of my childhood daydreaming about how to carve an endurance racing street circuit out of the town's road network.
It's fair to say that ambition remains on the back burner for now, but full credit is due to the people of Coventry for turning what must have begun as a similar fantasy into reality. Because the
MotoFest festival
at the weekend saw a sizeable chunk of the city's ring road closed to regular traffic to become a playground for some considerably more exotic machinery, in what was billed as a celebration of motorsport and the local car industry.
Local heroes
Sad to report that permission to create a sprint course didn't come through in time, meaning no competitive runs. And a fair number of chicanes were also put in to tame things down. But thousands of spectators still came along for a chance to see some very serious cars take to the Ringway, including the deeply incongruous sight of the Silk Cut liveried Jaguar XJR-9 that won Le Mans, being driven by sportscar veteran Andy Wallace.
Being the home team at this fixture, Jaguar was extremely well represented. The Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust had pretty much emptied the barn, sending everything from an immaculate C-Type to the brutish Broadspeed XJ12 Coupe racer to perform parade laps on both Saturday and Sunday. So did we want to come along and have a drive in something? Not even a twist of the arm required...
Arriving bright and early on Saturday morning I'm directed to the Ringway underpass next to the railway station. Here, in the grimy darkness, sits something like £50m of historically significant Jaguar products, surrounded by a slightly awed crowd. The tunnel is silent beyond echoing conversation but I'm handed a pair of ear plugs with strict instructions to put them in before any of the cars fire up. Apparently the XJR-9 alone has the sonic power to cause permanent hearing loss.
Back to the (very) old school
I'm down to drive two different cars. Very different. The first is a pre-war Jaguar SS100 Roadster, the second the fearsome one-off XJ13 Sportscar prototype. The SS sits apart from the pack looking conspicuously small and shiny next to some of the brutish racers. "We don't let people drive this one very often," says Dave, one of the Heritage Trust's experts and my chaperone for the first run, "it's a bit small for most."
He's not wrong. Getting in requires me to fold my knee around the backward rake of the door opening, and then slot myself around a vast wooden-rimmed steering wheel that leaves no more than a couple of inches of space on any side. To reach the clutch means putting at least one extra bend into my lower leg; I'm thankful that at least the pedal layout is conventional and that there's no need to bother with the spark advance control on the steering wheel.
The SS100 was the first roadster from the former Swallow Sidecar company to also carry Jaguar branding, with the SS name being phased out quickly after the war for fairly obvious reasons, not helped by the eagle-themed badge. It has a 2.5-litre overhead valve straight-six engine that develops 102hp, meaning it's probably the least powerful car in the entire festival, but in 1938 it was one of the very fastest sports cars on the road with a claimed top speed of 94mph. Dave warns me there's no synchromesh on second and not to expect too much from the brakes and then the tunnel is filled with noise as the pack fires up and it's time to go.
I'm the slowest thing out there by a considerable margin, but I probably also manage to have the most fun. Somewhere in front Andy Wallace leads the way in the XJR-9, not travelling at much more than a waving-to-the-crowds pace, but the chasing pack soon pulls away from the SS100 and leaves me driving it, if not flat-out, certainly to a higher percentage of its modest potential than any of the other cars here. The engine is torquey and the gearbox has a nice, light action - but the steering is almost comically heavy, needing to be wrestled into the slow corners with both arms. There's not much lock, either - a point made at the turn-around that's just a gap in the central divider which the SS only just makes in one turn. But on the plus side it's narrow and easily placed, allowing it to take a far finer line through the chicanes than any of the other cars. The brakes seem more than adequate too, despite Dave's warnings, but after just a couple of laps I'm already aching worse than if I'd spent an 18 hour stint in a modern car. No wonder, to judge by the pictures, those dashing young chaps in the 1930s were always grinning as they got out of their cars...
Just don't bend it
After a brief stop it's time to swap into the XJ13 and to pass from the sublime to the slightly ridiculous. The one-off, irreplaceable XJ13, a mid-engined V12 prototype that was built in 1966 as part of a subsequently cancelled sportscar plan. In the unlikely event it found itself on the open market it would almost certainly fetch more than £10m, possibly considerably more, making it comfortably the most expensive thing I've ever driven. Conversation is impossible; apparently it's been clocked at 127dB meaning communication is limited to hand gesture.
I'd love to say that the three laps of the ring road circuit that we share together mark the start of a deep and beautiful relationship, but the reality is soon clear that the XJ13 really doesn't want to be here. It's a car that was designed for 1960s endurance racing rather than 200-yard gaps between road cone chicanes, the engine is lumpy and bad tempered off-cam and struggles to clear its throat during the brief periods of full throttle. The dog-leg gearchange - which you operate with your right hand despite sitting on the right of the car - is also hard to get right on minimum acquaintance, and nowhere do we get out of third gear. The steering feels vastly better than the SS100, unassisted but nicely weighted delivering a level of communication that just didn't exist in 1938, but after driving the XJ13 to the display area it will occupy for the rest of the day my surprise conclusion is that I've had more fun driving the pre-war car.
Smoking thrills
The rest of the day gives plenty of opportunity to see more stuff, with action on track including drift cars and various classes of stock car racers performing demonstration laps on a miniature circuit on one side of the dual carriageway. There's tyre smoke and even a bit of contact, and the crowds seem happy to see some action. It's fair to say that MotoFest feels like an event some way short of maturity, organisation could politely be termed as light touch and what timings there were tended to slip. But there's huge potential here, especially if they manage to get a full sprint authorised for next year. Definitely something that more towns should be doing.