The stars of the Goodwood Festival of Speed car park

So it’s utterly fantastic that this leading British motoring event is fully back in 2021, with packed crowds being accompanied by weather that has so far been fine if not outstanding. One of the highlights of the event is the interesting, exotic and downright valuable cars that some of the visitors bring to the show – and get ushered into a car park reserved just for them. Feast your eyes on the winning cars this year:

It’s increasingly forgotten today, but the 350Z was once revered as a symbol of Nissan’s revival in the early noughties under Carlos Ghosn. We chose this customised example for its elegant paintwork and intricate front spoiler.

This gets an entry here for its sheer rarity and madcap indifference to automotive niceties like a windscreen. When we tested it we didn’t enjoy it much on the road, but it’s in its element on track. Power comes from a 2.3-litre Ford Ecoboost engine, delivering 360bhp.

Any British 710bhp supercar capable of 212mph is interesting and special, but it seems that this particular example - respendent in red - is owned by McLaren engineer and designer Christos Delantonis.

Yes I know you thought this was an AC Cobra – and so did we – but on further investigation it’s actually a Dax Tojeiro Convertible. John Tojeiro (1923-2005), a former engineer for AC joined the small Essex firm of Dax and this take on the Cobra was named after him. It looked simply fantastic in the sun.

The 360 had big shoes to fill as the follow up to the much-admired 355, but did it pretty well, and it was considerably easier to live with. This example gets extra points for its number plate.

Autocar loves the A110 for its divine driving experience, but when it’s specced like this it verges into adoration – those wheels are simply wonderful. Among the cheapest cars in the special car park, it’s also surely one of the best.

Goodwood this year sees the first public showing of the glamorous new Lotus Emira, but we would be remiss not to mention this 2020 Exige, with its tastefully aggressive paint job.

The Evo was the name given to the later, facelifted, Huracan, and the simple black and orange helped the car stand out among all the exotica.

Less if often more as we’ve already seen with the A110. And the Caterham also offers a pure driving experience, though you do need to make rather more sacrifices – especially when it starts raining.

The Evora was unveiled at the British International Motor Show in 2008 (as it happened the last such event) and was lauded by early reviews. But it was never as successful as the company hoped, sales perennially deeply in the shadow of cars like the Porsche Cayman. A shame, because apart from being a terrific drive it also manged to pull off the packaging trick of being a mid-engined 2+2. This elegant example is a relatively late model from 2018. The Evora will be replaced by the Emira in the range.

We tend not to be over-keen on customised cars here at Autocar but we’ll make an exception for this aggressively interesting purple take on the original Porsche Cayman.

The outgoing Mercedes S-Class coupe is an elegant and opulent grand tourer, but that is not the Brabus way, taking the base car and morphing it into this muscular bruiser.

An early 911 – not much more to say about this start of a legend. And in this colour, especially lovely

The Urus is not a car for the shy-and-retiring type of person in any spec – but this is surely especially the case here. But it’s not all about looks; we reckon it’s one of the best-handling performance SUVs you can buy.

There was a big effort at colour coordination this year in the car park – easier said than done given the number of cars involved. But this particular Ferrari was a star of the yellow section, its racing stripes completing its look.

There is absolutely no missing the intent of this car: to get there first. This is a 2017 example.

Another star of the yellow section was this immaculate 1971 Interceptor. Extra points for the radio aerial, surely enabling Test Match Special on Long Wave in this case.

This Il Tricolore 488 looked absolutely sensational in the sun on Friday morning. But we have a question: who are they gunning for on Sunday evening?

The 996 series of 911s have for long been in the shadow of other generations, probably unfairly. But this very rare Club Sport variant of an already rare GT3 variant means this particular car is very special indeed. Very much focused on track use, it comes complete with a roll-cage.

Dressed in ice white, there can be few sharper ways to get to Goodwood than in this V12 drop-top. Bravo.