Future and Past Collide—Confusingly, Excitingly—at the World's Best Car Meet

Motor Trend

15-07-2025

Uncertainty is everywhere in the automotive industry. On-again off-again tariffs, flat sales, the looming threat of Chinese automakers, and yes, electrification all present hurdles. Uncertainty on the latter—frequently conflated with automotive technological progress by enthusiasts—was top of mind for me at the 2025 Goodwood Festival of Speed. A ride-along over the weekend with Travis Pastrana in a 2025 Subaru WRX ARA24 and with Max McCrae in his uncle Colin's 1990 Subaru Legacy RS at the festival's Forest Rally Stage and watching the Festival's signature timed shootout has me thinking a bit differently about the march of progress.
The 2025 Goodwood Festival of Speed showcased automotive progress with Chinese EVs, rallying with Travis Pastrana in a Subaru WRX, and debates on electrification's impact. The event also highlighted new car debuts and significant Chinese automaker presence, reflecting industry shifts.
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Pastrana, to most Americans, needs little introduction. Some know him for his Hall of Fame motocross career, a fearless freestyle motocross X Games champ, stuntman from Nitro Circus, or as a NASCAR racer. But rallying and rallycross, now that he's retired from competitive motocross due to a frightfully long list of injuries (including, as he was quick to point out, a broken urethra), has long seemed to be his second love. Pastrana recently rejoined Subaru Motorsports USA where he's competing in the American Rally Association.
At Goodwood, he took me for a ride in Subaru's Open 4WD WRX ARA24 car. These cars are heavily modified from stock WRXs, featuring restricted 2.0-liter turbocharged flat-4s good for 320 hp and 380 lb-ft of torque, running through a six-speed sequential transmission and mechanical differential to all four wheels. At each corner the stock suspension is swapped for new springs and dampers with a foot of travel and 15-inch wheels on gravel rally tires. Short of the hybridized million-dollar tube frame rally cars now running in the World Rally Championship, the open class WRX ARA car is about as bleeding edge as you can get in the rally world.
The WRX ARA's runs—and those of the Toyota and Hyundai WRC teams— wouldn't be officially counted on the Forest Rally Stage, but the fact that the festival was posting times was enough to bring out the full competitor in Pastrana and the rest of the Subaru team as they sought to post the fastest time in one of their laps. Slower and wider than the Rally1 WRC cars (not to mention cheaper, too), the WRX ARA24 would have its work cut out for it.
Our run was, in a word, quick. I have no idea of the time of our particular run, but Pastrana and the team would go on to post the second-quickest time on the course of the weekend at 2.33.2, just a couple seconds behind a Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 (which the Subaru team was quick to point out cut the Gymkhana barrel out of its unofficial run). The car felt phenomenally fun from the passenger seat, seemingly reacting instantaneously to Pastrana's steering, braking, and throttle inputs, while the rally suspension soaked up the ruts, berms, and jumps on the course as softly as a dune runner might. Watching an elite athlete such as Pastrana work up close was equally fascinating, as he wielded the WRX like Shohei Ohtani does a baseball bat, or Connor McDavid does a hockey stick—using their tools' strengths to improve their individual performances and knowing when they might need to make up for any weaknesses in their equipment.
While not yet quite as accomplished as his father Alister, grandfather Jimmy, or uncle Colin, Max McCrae has already set out to make a name of his own in the WRC's Group Rally2, where he runs a Citroen C3 Rally2. He was at Goodwood, however, helping honor the legacy of his uncle. That's where the Legacy RS comes in. In many ways both Colin McCrae's and Subaru's rally journeys began with this car, which was piloted to a second place finish in the 1992 Rally Sweden by Colin. Subaru would soon replace the Legacy with the Impreza, marking a direct lineage to Pastrana's WRX.
On paper, it should prove a match for the modern ARA car. Simpler, and lighter than its modern descendant, it's powered by a 2.0-liter turbocharged flat-4 with 290 hp and 289 lb-ft of torque. But some of its other mechanicals are simpler, both in terms of how they operate and how they're manufactured. The Legacy lacks a modern anti-lag system and puts its power down through a five-speed dogbox manual transmission. Its all-wheel drive system also features permanently locked differentials that make low speed maneuvering difficult, and a hydraulic handbrake without the responsiveness of a modern unit.
Despite the, uh, legacy of this particular Legacy, McCrae didn't take it easy on the car during our ride along with him. To be honest, I didn't get the sense that he could if he wanted to maximize its performance because nothing seemed to happen instantly or easily in the Legacy RS. On straights McCrae needed to manage the body's balance as the car skipped down the stage, gearshifts in a shift pattern the motorsports world has long moved past, and brakes without the feel or stopping power of their modern counterparts. In corners, McCrae had to balance the hydraulic hand brake, diffs, and also keep the engine in the sweet spot of its powerband where he could minimize lag. McCrae had to work twice as hard to get every last bit of performance out of that Legacy, which leaves less room for the driver to actually focus on driving and maximizing their own performance.
Progress rears its head again during the Festival of Speed's headlining timed shoot out on Sunday afternoon, where competitors vie to post the quickest time up the 1.16-mile, nine-turn hillclimb. Last year the Subaru Project Midnight WRX, a highly modified WRX ARA rally car, built, like the rally car by Subaru Motorsports USA technical partner Vermont Sports Cars, with 670 hp designed to dominate on this single event and driven by Scott Speed came in second to a quad-motor electric Ford Supervan.
This year, the team, facing a 2,000-plus horsepower quad-motor Ford F-150 Lightning Supertruck, expected the same results despite some changes based on Speed's feedback from last year. As Vermont Sports Cars technical director Yannis Loison told us, 'With [an] internal combustion engine only we'll never reach what [Ford has] with the EV. If we really want to compete against them, to try to beat them, we need a combo with [an] internal combustion engine and something electric.'
Unfortunately for the Subaru Motorsports USA team, Loison proved prophetic. Despite improving by 1.04 seconds to 45.03 versus last year, the Ford truck still beat the souped-up Subaru, finishing in 43.22 seconds. And that's through no fault of Speed. Like Pastrana earlier in the WRX ARA car, in-car footage of Speed showed him methodically wringing every last ounce of performance out of Project Midnight, shaving grass on corners where he could, and narrowly skirting the unforgiving walls near the top of the climb on the unforgiving course. But the Supertruck, driven by Romain Dumas, made up for any disadvantage it might have in its weight with power, simply eliminating any straight in a blink while still somehow managing to carry high speeds through corners.
In a lot of ways what the driving loving public and motorsports is going through in trying to figure out how much—if at all—to embrace electrification mimics what other sports have gone through as technology progressed.
Professional baseball, when faced with introducing home run–friendly aluminum or composite bats, opted to preserve the tradition of wood bats instead. That makes it much more difficult for pros to hit home runs, and as an indirect result the league has tweaked the game's rules to improve offense. Professional hockey, meanwhile, allowed the introduction of aluminum and eventually composite sticks in the '90s. The long term result is a game that's faster, and more offensive, thanks to players who've since learned how to maximize the whippier, more responsive sticks and improve their own games.
I'm not advocating one way or the other, but at some point we're going to have to decide collectively as driving enthusiasts whether we want to embrace the excitement and promise of new technologies or preserve the past in stasis. Other items from the 2025 Goodwood Festival of Speed
The auto show is alive and well: Big international auto shows have been shrinking in significance for about a decade now, with COVID nearly decimating them entirely. The Goodwood Festival of Speed perhaps shows a way forwards for the future. The infield of the festival featured stands from the likes of BMW, Ford, Honda, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lotus, MG, Renault, and more, where folks could hop in and out of cars back-to-back. In between, they could enjoy hillclimb runs, festival food and drinks, live music, shopping, and kid play areas.
Some automakers even took the opportunity to debut new cars, such as the 2026 Hyundai Ioniq 6 N and Ioniq 6 N Performance, Honda Super EV concept (a little Kei-sized city EV), and the Porsche Cayenne Electric, and run them up the hill for the public. Where else can you see a new car debut and hit the road in the same day? Goodwood, that's where.
Hot commodities: When it comes to the infield auto show–like section of Goodwood, we think the three individually most popular vehicles were the Ioniq 6 N, the Renault 5 E-Tech, and the Renault's sporty cousin, the Alpine A290. Hyundai's large display featured both new Ioniq 6 N iterations front-and-center and there was never a time we walked by where they weren't surrounded by throngs of people. Even the tech talk Hyundai did on the cars seemed well-attended.
The Renault and Alpine, meanwhile, are stylish Volkswagen Golf–sized EVs that look stellar in person. Well-proportioned outside, inside they featured high quality body-colored textile seats and accent stitching, and even an optional baguette holder on the Renault version. The Renault 5 E-Tech has 40 and 52 kWh battery packs and up to 150 hp from a single front-mounted motor with up to 249 miles of range on the generous WTLP cycle. The sportier Alpine A290 keeps that 52 kWh pack and ups power to 217 hp in its hottest configuration, dropping to 236 miles. The Renault starts at around $30,000, while the Alpine nearer $46,000, though both notably include British VAT. Foreign journalists we've spoken to adore driving both cars.
The Chinese are coming, the Chinese are coming! With the United Kingdom officially out of the European Union, its own automotive industry in distress, and the Chinese looking for more markets for their EVs, BYD, Chery, Geely, SAIC, Xiaomi, and Xpeng had a sizeable footprint at Goodwood. SAIC, which owns MG, has had a growing presence on UK roads for years and its booth, headlined by a bumblebee-yellow Cyberster, was packed all weekend. Ditto Lotus' (owned by Geely), with the Electre and Emiya, swamped.
Even brands without a British legacy had the public's attention. Xiaomi and XPeng ran cars up the hill (MG did, too). BYD's Denza luxury brand's booth had a DJ and electric violinist playing all weekend and featured a steady line of folks who wanted to sit inside the luxury D9 van.
Chery also had a clever way to get folks into their cars. It provided a fleet of Jaecoo and Omoda SUVs—both from two new export-only brands—to shuttle folks to and from parking lots and around the sprawling grounds. We asked one driver, an older gentleman driving an Omoda 5 compact PHEV SUV, about his perception of Chinese EVs. He responded, 'That's the question, isn't it? My friends and I have been talking a lot about that, and we've come to the conclusion that they're perfectly alright.'
According to the BBC, one in 10 new cars sold in the UK thus far this year are Chinese. MG and Polestar represent the bulk of those sales.