The 8 Best Cars at the 2026 Goodwood Festival of Speed

Any project that unites the talents of the engineer Giotto Bizzarrini and the designer Giorgetto Giugiaro will transcend even those musical-sounding names. The former was chief engineer at Ferrari when it developed the 250 GTO, before he split with Enzo in a well-documented huff in 1961. The latter needs no introduction. The 5300 GT later emerged under the Bizzarrini imprimatur, and a recent limited-run continuation car sated marque adherents while we all await the new Giotto hypercar. The Lusso revives an open-topped concept conceived back in the early 1960s but later abandoned. It looks as bewitching as any period Giugiaro car, but features modern air-conditioning and weather sealing, as well as a powerful audio system. The car you see here is a customer one-off, but a further nine commissions are anticipated.

Interior highlights include European maple wood on the dashboard, with hand-painted stripes reminiscent of a Riva boat. The exterior blue is called Azzurro Gaia, in honor of the owner’s daughter, and inspired by the specific blue of the Ligurian sea. Much of the structure is made of carbon fiber, for vastly improved structural integrity, but the mechanicals remain close to those that powered a 5300 GT to a class win at Le Mans in 1965, that engine being a 5.3-liter small-block Chevy V-8. Rack-and-pinion steering is another welcome contemporary update.

“The Aperta Lusso was conceived with hidden convenience. Almost every part is reengineered, but at a glance it looks like it could have just driven out of Giotto’s factory six decades ago,” a spokesperson notes.

Chinese mega-corps BYD is making huge inroads in European markets with its technically accomplished saloons and SUVs. Denza, originally a collab with Daimler Benz, is the Daniel Craig–endorsed premium play, and while all-electric hypercars are a tough sell, the Denza Z is on target. Choose between a Coupe, Spider, or Racing version, with prices starting in the U.K. at 142,900 pounds sterling (close to $191,200). Former Alfa Romeo designer Wolfgang Egger has bequeathed the Z with a strong, if slightly derivative, styling presence—we see shades of the Bentley Continental GT from the rear—but in the total absence of heritage, the lure here is performance, technology, quality, and charging speed.

Power comes courtesy of three electric motors rated at a resounding 1,582 hp, and fed by a second-generation blade battery with a 76 kWh capacity for a best range of 254 miles. That may be sub-optimal, but the way it copes with Goodwood’s fast and fast-flowing circuit is not. It’s unavoidably heavy, of course (the Coupe weighs more than 4,900 pounds), but Denza’s e3 Sports Car Platform is effective, its magnetic dampers secure the ride, and the Cell-to-Body battery integration ensures impressive structural rigidity. But it’s the flash-charging tech that hoovers up the headlines. The Z can ingest the electrons at up to 1,500 kW for a recharge of 10 to 70 percent in just five minutes. Solid interior quality, too, and decent UX. Honestly, it’s way better than we were expecting, even if the badge has minimal kudos. Expect that situation to change pretty soon.

Change is afoot at McLaren, and not just because its new C.E.O. Nick Collins is reframing the cars the company makes. There’s also a new emphasis on how the British automaker tells its story, and an embrace of legacy. Interestingly, when it comes to road cars, the epochal 1990s-era F1 isn’t actually Year Zero. Nope. Back at the tail end of the 1960s, founder Bruce McLaren and his lieutenants conceived and built the M6GT in just 11 weeks. It drew on the Can-Am car raced by McLaren and Denny Hulme in 1967; contesting the fearsome, “anything goes” North American race series provided the race team with considerable impetus. Plans for low volume road-car production were curtailed by Bruce’s untimely death while testing at Goodwood in 1970, and the original has been something of a dusty footnote until now.

A team at McLaren’s Special Operations division sourced the original molds and recreated the body and tubular steel chassis. The windscreen was digitally scanned and manufactured by a specialist supplier, the closed-dome aluminum rivets sourced from the aerospace industry. The engine is a period-correct Chevy small-block V-8 making in excess of 400 hp. As the M6GT weighs less than 1,984 pounds, this is our kind of power-to-weight ratio. The gearshift knob is made of walnut, the seat cushion fixed to the chassis. Call us crazy, but this may well earn our best-in-show accolade. Someone else out there agrees; we’re told McLaren has turned down an offer of 2 million pound sterling for the car.

For this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, McLaren also unveiled its limited-series 788HS, of which only 200 examples are being made (100 each of the Coupe and Spider). It acts as a farewell for the 720S/750S model lines after almost a decade. Output is up to 777 hp while weight is down to about 2,789 pounds, for a 623 hp-per-ton figure. Deliberately engineered for more vibrations and angrier overall vibes, the 788HS also presents a revised titanium exhaust with four outlets, and reworked aero for 10 percent more downforce than the banzai 765LT. “Definitive and final”, says McLaren. We’re inclined to believe them.

Time waits for no man, not even Horacio Pagani. The great maestro of automotive artistry recently turned 70 years old, though he looks younger. His company is planning three special edition Huayra models in honor of this particular milestone, a further example of how Pagani models refuse to go gracefully, even as their successors—in this case the Utopia—step up. The company’s bespoke division, the sublimely named Grandi Complicazioni, is responsible for the partly transparent Pearl Orange and Inky Blue livery, which reveals, as ever, the intense allure of the company’s carbon-fiber weave. Anodized aluminum accents and unique wheels complete an exterior that’s almost, but not quite, hypercar self-parody.

There’s ceramic white and blue leather inside, although the presence of a gearshift is arguably more significant. The Mercedes-AMG 6.0-liter twin-turbo V-12 makes 864 hp and 811 ft lbs of torque, channeled exclusively to the rear wheels. No mean feat, as is Pagani’s ability to nudge the boundaries of good taste without exceeding them. The Derecho—named after a windstorm—joined examples of the marque’s Huayra Codalunga Speedster and Huayra R Tempesta at Goodwood.

It debuted at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in 2024, so it was emotional to see—and hear—Red Bull’s RB17 powering up the Goodwood hill. Red Bull’s former chief technical officer Adrian Newey was behind the wheel, taking turns with his son, Harrison, and F1 drivers Yuki Tsunoda and Isack Hadjar. And it’s changed: the fin above the engine cover has new slats and a multilayered configuration, and the front splitter and rear wing have been reworked. Somewhere between closed-cockpit F1 car and WEC hypercar in form and technical content, the RB17’s fabulous aero-optimized form is matched by its Cosworth-developed 1,184 hp, 4.5-liter V-10. We’ll bring you more as we have it. For now, we’re just pleased to see it move.

Alois Ruf is a modest man who has grown the family business—Porsche optimization—with a steely stealthiness and notable technical ambition. The VHS of test driver Stefan Roser piloting a Ruf CTR Yellowbird around the Nürburgring in 1987 was viral content for an entire generation before the concept existed (epic driving, questionable footwear—head to YouTube after you’ve read this).

Now Alois has sprung another surprise, constructing a “Boxer-Eight” power unit and dropping it into an elongated CTR3 prototype. The project majors on a 4.8-liter mill with horizontally opposed cylinders and twin turbos for a power output north of 1,000 hp. “A boxer-eight has never been part of our story,” Alois explains, “or anyone else’s in this form, so we decided to write a new chapter in automotive history.” Note also the presence of a six-speed manual ’box. These guys are right on the money.

The Danish hypercar specialists at Zenvo are regulars in Goodwood’s supercar paddock, and in truth we’re always happy to see them while wondering where they’re headed next and exactly how they’ll get there. A management reshuffle has installed ex-Praga and McLaren boss Mark Harrison, and the Aurora Tur model suggests that this boutique operation deserves its place in the firmament. Designer Christian Brandt continues to carve out a distinct aesthetic, giving the car an arrow-shaped prow and a more sculpted form despite the intense aero requirements. (Although the previous Zenvo’s dancing centripetal wing is no more.)

The Tur is ostensibly the softer GT version—the other is the track-oriented Agil—but rarely has the “grand tourer” term been more relative, as the Aurora Tur is equipped with a 6.6-liter, quad-turbo V-12 codeveloped with Mahle Powertrain. Add in the three e-motors, and the output totals 1,850 bhp. Ricardo supplies the eight-speed paddleshift transmission. Zenvo claims the car covers zero to 62 mph in 2.3 seconds and has a top speed of 260 mph. Prices (in Europe) start at 2.8 million euros (nearly $3.2 million). A place at the top table awaits.

Click here for more photos of the 8 Best Cars from the 2026 Goodwood Festival of Speed.