Currently reading: Cholmondeley Pageant of Power: full report and pictures

The complete rundown on the Cholmondeley Pageant of Power 2013

Variable weather and fantastic cars always seem to go together at the annual Cholmondeley Pageant of Power, and this year’s event, the sixth, excelled in both things, featuring a crop of remarkable machinery never seen at the event before, plus a selection of weather that ended for once on the best possible note.

Things looked distinctly iffy on the opening Friday, when a cloudburst briefly halted a supercar cavalcade from Manchester to the event site, but perfect conditions on the climactic Sunday showed at last just how welcoming and enjoyable the Cholmondeley Castle estate, near Chester, can be in streaming sunshine, and how quick and challenging the track is when completely dry. 

This increasingly popular all-comers motoring festival-cum-sprint — which also features regular air displays and watersports events on the large lake that flanks the start-line — led to a titanic battle in most classes, notably in the Autocar-sponsored classes for supercars and track-day cars.

The three-day audience topped 60,000 people for the first time (a 15 per cent increase) and as a result the event was better supported than ever by the motor industry’s big names, starting with Bentley, celebrating the 10th anniversary of its Le Mans win in 2003, and whose HQ is only about 15 miles away in Crewe. 

“We’re delighted with the way things came together,” said event director, James Hall. “The weather kept improving through the weekend. When on Saturday morning I saw Brutus, the 46-litre BMW aero-engined special from Germany, set fire to the grass as it drove away, I knew the weather was going to be with us this year. And Sunday — Father’s Day — was truly fantastic.” 

The headline battle for fastest time of the meeting — and because of the ideal conditions, a new course record —  was between Caterham’s SP/300R and Radical’s RXC. Radical’s Robbie Kerr, a well-known single-seater driver, settled the argument with a time of 55.29sec, beating Scott Mansell’s second-fastest Caterham by 1.3sec on a storming final run of the weekend, which also chopped around five seconds from the existing outright record.

The same field featured a deadly battle between an Ariel Atom 3.5 (not the V8 this year but the more affordable supercharged Honda version) and one of its marketplace rivals, the BAC Mono. Both are road-going cars whose waiting lists have defied parlous economic times, with victory in a three-day battle going to Niki Faulkner’s Atom with the remarkable Sunday time of 61.18, that shaded the Mono by a second.

“It’s a terrific result for us,” said Ariel boss Tom Siebert. “Our car’s a genuine road-going machine with an MoT — you could drive it home — and it costs a fraction as much as others in the business. We proved something today.”        

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As usual, the Cholmondeley pageant was stuffed with cars rarely seen in the ‘soft south’, prominent among them Kevin Wheatcroft’s magnificent W125, a nut-and-bolt recreation of the most evocative of all pre-war “Silver Arrows” (diplomatically not sporting a Mercedes-Benz star on its bonnet), which sounded fantastic, even on gentle shakedown runs. The car can be seen most days at the nearby Donington Collection of singe-seat racing cars. 

Peter Neumark brought his famous Jaguar D-type, OKV1, a finned, short-nose which was the second D ever built and the earliest of a trio entered at Le Mans by the factory for 1954. It finished second in the 24-hour classic.

As ever, automotive anniversaries partly guided this year’s Cholmondeley car selection. Aston Martin led the whole event with a class of a dozen fine cars, from pre-war Ulster to the very same Vanquish, registered 100YRS, which Autocar used to cover the recent Nürburgring 24-hour race. Aston owners energetically supported it in a special trackside parking areas.

Bentley marked its decade-old win by bringing its Le Mans-winning Speed Eight — and had winning driver Guy Smith on hand to demonstrate it with verve — hitting 112 mph on what, for a car like this was an exceptionally tight track — and chatting cheerfully to fans on all three days.

They also showed an extremely promising-looking racing Continental GT3 racer, due to make its race debut later this year. Lamborghini, 50 years old this year, was well represented by dealers and owners, and a mighty Maserati 250F, driven with verve by Andy Willis, showed what the greatest Italian grand prix cars looked and sounded like 60 years ago.

As usual, the Autocar paddock for road-going supercars attracted the biggest crowds, and many showed a surprising turn of speed on what was for them a narrow track that demands lots of acceleration and excellent brakes.

Tim Marshall-Rowe brilliantly defended Lamborghini’s honour with the outstanding time of 62.64 seconds  in an LP570 Superleggera to beat a field of what featured big names like Andy Wallace (Bugatti Veyron), Guy Smith (Bentley Continental GT Speed), Anthony Reid (Noble M600) and Derek Bell (Bentley “ice record” cabrio).

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The event concluded in streaming sunshine, with the Fathers’ Day punters universally regretting it had ended. “I’ve had an amazing time,” said one. “At one stage I was trying to watch Brutus, a bloke on a flyboard, and the Avro Lancaster — all at once. That’s not a problem you have anywhere else...”

Steve Cropley

Steve Cropley Autocar
Title: Editor-in-chief

Steve Cropley is the oldest of Autocar’s editorial team, or the most experienced if you want to be polite about it. He joined over 30 years ago, and has driven many cars and interviewed many people in half a century in the business. 

Cropley, who regards himself as the magazine’s “long stop”, has seen many changes since Autocar was a print-only affair, but claims that in such a fast moving environment he has little appetite for looking back. 

He has been surprised and delighted by the generous reception afforded the My Week In Cars podcast he makes with long suffering colleague Matt Prior, and calls it the most enjoyable part of his working week.

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stagata1 17 June 2013

CPOP Pics

Great set of photos but where's the Veyron?

Jamie88 15 June 2013

The Cholmondeley Pageant of Power

I have never been before as it is quite a way from where I live but the Gallery of Photos look fantastic with plenty of different Supercars from Old Classics to Present day Models

stagata1 14 June 2013

Rain again

I last made the trip to CPOP in 2009 when it rained all day and it seems that no matter what dates are chosen for this event it always seems to rain. Tough on the organisers and spectators.

Forecast is wet for saturday and windy for Sunday. Instead I shall look forward to seeing the photos and hope it'll be sunny for Goodwood FoS next month.