June 23, 2016, was a pretty significant day for BMW and for Great Britain—for different reasons. On that day, the 2016 Goodwood Festival of Speed opened in Goodwood, with BMW as the featured marque in honor of its 100th anniversary as a company. It was also the day that British voters decided to leave the 28-member European Union (EU), which could eventually have a significant impact on the BMW Group as an auto manufacturer—not to mention BMW, Mini, and Rolls-Royce customers in Great Britain and the rest of the world.
The Goodwood Festival of Speed kicked off with the Parade of Champions and the unveiling of the traditional sculpture in front of Lord March’s house. When we say “house,” think a really big, 400-year old, and really beautiful English manor house occupied by Lord March the Duke of Richmond and his family. It has its own motor racing circuit and golf course as part of the expansive grounds.
It was there on the evening of June 23rd that the world first saw this year’s central feature, appropriately welcomed with fireworks, since the sculpture itself resembles an explosion of championship-winning BMW race cars.
BMW is known for its Art Cars. Those are BMWs—often race cars—that have been painted by world-renowned artists. The art is on the car. In the case of the Goodwood sculpture, the cars are the art—literally. Comprising the piece designed by Garry Judah are a BMW 328 Mille Miglia Roadster, a Brabham-BMW BT52 Formula 1 car, and the 1999 Le Mans-winning BMW V12 LMR.
Lest you look at the sculpture and think that BMW did a nice job of reproducing those cars in a smaller scale, look again. Those are real, actual, honest-to-goodness full-size cars. The BMW 328 is the very same car that ran in this year’s Mille Miglia rally and includes event damage that had to be fixed before the car was hoisted into its place in the sculpture.
The Goodwood central fixture weighs 140 tons and took six weeks to build. The whole thing is welded together. Take a look at the vieo below to see its assembly.
As big as it is, the BMW sculpture represents only a part of BMW’s presence at this year’s event. It brought about 200 vintage and modern vehicles to Goodwood. Lord March opened the event driving a BMW 507.
And as big as the Goodwood Festival of Speed along with BMW’s huge presence was, it was not the biggest thing going on in Great Britain on the 23rd. That honor goes to the momentous “Brexit” vote, in which a majority of voters in Britain voted to exit the European Union. Britain plus exit equals Brexit.
It remains to be seen how the Brexit will affect all of us here and in Europe. The European Union is essentially a free-trade zone for all of its member countries, so at the very least, Great Britain will have to negotiate individual trade agreements with all those EU nations. The EU also mandates things like emission and fuel mileage standards on its members, so it will be interesting to see how the British parliament transitions from a European-centric auto manufacturing model to a national one.
The BMW Group sells a lot of vehicles in Great Britain. It is BMW’s fourth-largest market. It also makes a lot of vehicles and vehicle engines there. Mini and Rolls-Royce are synonymous with the British auto industry.
After the Brexit vote, BMW AG said there would be no changes right away at Mini or Rolls-Royce. In a statement reported by the Wall Street Journal, the company said, “While it is clear there will now be a period of uncertainty, there will be no immediate change to our operations in the U.K. Today, we know that many of the relevant conditions for supplying the European market will have to be renegotiated, but of course we cannot say what this means for our U.K. operations until those future regulatory and legislative arrangements are agreed.”
In addition to Mini and Rolls-Royce, BMW’s Hams Hall plant manufactures engines that are used at company or contractor plants in Regensburg and Leipzig in Germany, Graz in Austria, and Oxford in the U.K to build BMW 1 Series, BMW 3 Series, and Mini cars.
At this point in time, no one knows for sure how the Brexit will affect Great Britain’s auto industry, the world’s economy, and what changes BMW will feel are necessary to maintain production and profitability when it comes to vehicle made or sold in the United Kingdom.
If BMW feels it needs additional revenue streams, we recommend it start selling scale models of the 2016 Goodwood sculpture. We’d buy one.—Scott Blazey
Interested in how the sculpture was built? Watch this:
[Photos and video courtesy of Top Gear and BMW.]
