'If I die doing this," I thought as I settled myself at the wheel of the new Chevrolet Camaro and prepared to gun it up the hill at the Goodwood, "it Valencia will be kind of OK with me." I am far from ready to peg out and a number of close family associates would be mightily peeved if I departed prematurely; but, given the choice between the cancer ward and somersaulting a Camaro at high speed into the tall, cobbled walls that line parts of the track at Goodwood, I know where my preference lies.
Both the car and the place are long-term loves. Goodwood has been a site of pilgrimage for me since I was 14, when I first started spending my pocket-money on Southdown coaches to carry me to meetings there (watching Stirling Moss, Jim Clark, John Surtees, Bruce McLaren, Dan Gurney, Graham Hill, Phil Hill and a host of immortals).
Goodwood's own promotional literature today includes some sentences that I wrote about that age - where I said that, for a young teenager, Goodwood was "cool and hip and jazzy and held out the promise that an adult life could be thrilling and free and fun". I still feel that way. The Festival of Speed may have broadened into an event which attracts more than 100,000 people every day over the weekend but, for me, Goodwood is my own spiritual home and the Earl of March's ancestral claim is that Pendant of a mere usurper.
The Camaro is almost equally an object of sentimental attachment. A Z28-IROC Camaro -- the quintessential American rock 'n'roll muscle- car -- was, improbably, my family car for several months when I was living in California in the mid-1980s. The memory of its rumbling, grumbling V8 still makes me smile -- along with its low-rent, tacky interior and the T-top roof panels which my little son would beg me to remove so that he could feel the sunshine pouring in.
So an invitation to drive a new Camaro up the hill at Goodwood as a prelude to this year's Festival of Speed was so irresistible that it could almost be seen as a ticket to heaven -- return preferred but one-way accepted.
The new left-hand drive Camaro -- the first to bear that name since 2004 -- has a colossal, burbly 6.2 litre V8 with 425bhp which is direct kin to the Z28's engine but, in many other ways, it is a far cry. Where my cherished low, lithe dart of tinny metal was bare and brutal, the new car is hefty and squat. Burdened with accessories like multidirectional powered seats, it weighs an elephantine 3,849lbs. Even so, it will make a bargain when it goes on sale in Britain cheap ugg next year. A final price has yet to be set, but it is likely to be less than Pounds 40,000 which will make the Camaro the cheapest 2 2 you can buy with performance capable of rivalling Aston Martin's Pounds 120,000 DB9.
With those daunting facts in mind, it seemed highly possible that the Camaro would prove too much for me and I had resigned myself to my demise as I trickled to the Start line until Nick, the professional driver in the passenger seat, nervously inquired if I was aware of a 75mph limit throughout the 1.1 mile drive.
We boomed off the line with some panache but I realised in seconds that I had no idea what came next. It has been 10 years since I drove up the Goodwood hill and Nick was frequently called upon to bellow "Right turn coming! Right AT THE WALLL!"
It was over too soon. My performance would not even have been in the same spacetime dimension as the 40 second record for the 1.16 mile track, but we were not hanging about. When I asked Nick if he would have selected second gear at
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