Nostalgic rarities at the 2025 Revival Car Show | Axon’s Automotive Anorak

This year, due to other Revival duties, plus the sporadic occasional rain showers that affected the 2025 Revival weekend, I was frustratingly only able to make it Over the Road once. When I did, I was rewarded for my minimal effort by an outstanding array of exceptional classic cars. 

As well as arguably the UK’s finest and most diverse annual variety of older Bentleys, Aston Martins, Bristols, Rolls-Royces, Jaguars, early Land Rovers, MGs, Austins and other great British classics, the spread and variety of lesser-spotted Continental and American metal too was quite breathtaking.    

On arriving at one of the main Revival Car Show entrances (having been majorly distracted en route by the many tempting displays and retails stands Over The Road), I was greeted by row upon row of amazing pre-1966 vehicles, many looking slightly mud splattered from their journey into the sizeable grass field.

An imposing trio of BMC’s early-60s Pininfarina-styled prestige saloons (Vanden Plas Princess 4.0-litre, Wolseley 6/110 and Austin Westminster) were my first sightings, with a rare Jensen-built Austin A40 Sport nearby keeping them company.

A few steps further in the pre-‘66 zone, a S.S. Jaguar 3.5-litre and later E-Type S1 made for an interesting pairing, as did a well-travelled mud-splattered but still lovely Facel Vega HK500, freshly driven over from Paris, which rubbed wing mirrors with a sinister Soviet-era GAZ Volga M21.

A standard SWB Series One Land Rover made for an uncommon comparison with a Minerva Land Rover, built under licence in Belgium in the 1950s by the once-admired luxury car maker.

The French owners of a pair of Citroen Traction Avants made for quite a sight, dressed in their finest Revival fashions and clearly enjoying a huge and sociable Gallic-style lunch break, with baguettes, cheese and wine flowing generously.

A delightful 1920s BNC French cyclecar and rare Morgan Plus 4 Plus (one of only 26 made) were also unexpected pre-‘66 highlights, as were a pair of rare 1960s RHD American Ford Falcon and Rambler Ambassador sedans.

In the tax-free post-‘66 Revival Car Show area, a couple of very unusual Continental station wagon conversions caught my eye. A Belgian-registered Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow Estate and a German Jaguar XJS Shooting Break that wasn’t one of the more familiar Lynx Eventer conversions, but rather an extended rear end variant, possibly modified by German Jaguar tuning specialist Arden.

A perfect 1970s nostalgic scene was presented an immaculate Renault 5 parked up alongside a classic three-door Range Rover, with a pair of exciting foreign-registered Citroën SMs — both with the desirable and scarce magnesium wheels option — located very close by.

A Honda Civic 1200 and one of the final 50 UK market run-out editions of the Volkswagen Beetle (introduced in 1978 and all painted in metallic silver) somehow managed to escape the mud and shone brightly in the welcome early afternoon sunshine, along with hundreds of other classic machines, that always make going Over the Road more than worthwhile at the Goodwood Revival.

Photography by Gary Axon and Matt Sills.