An American Goodwood? New Event Will Try To Replicate The Iconic Festival Of Speed

Companies are pulling out of traditional auto shows with alarming regularity, but enthusiast events such as the Goodwood Festival of Speed have largely bucked the trend.

While this year’s festival has been cancelled due to the coronavirus, the event has been growing in popularity and has been transformed into a mini auto show as a number of companies stage debuts there.

The idea will now be replicated on the other side of the Atlantic as The Detroit News reports the inaugural American Festival of Speed will happen in the fall of 2021.

The new event is slated to take place at the M1 Concourse which is a private automotive club in Pontiac, Michigan that features the 1.5 mile (2.4 km) long Champion Motor Speedway as well as more than 250 private garages which range for relatively basic to downright luxurious.

The American Festival of Speed is slated to kick off on September 30th and run through October 3rd of 2021. It will also feature its own version of Goodwood’s hill climb as there will be “timed runs of international supercars.”

More details will be announced closer to the event, but Pontiac Motorsports Exposition CEO Tim Hartg told the publication both the American Festival of Speed and the upcoming Woodward Dream Show will be modeled on the Goodwood Festival of Speed and the Goodwood Revival. As he explained, “The theme of both shows is ‘Past, Present and Future,’ which is cool because we want to bring electric-sports racing out here, too.”

He also noted the American Festival of Speed won’t be a static show as “We want to have a demonstration of these kind of cars. And we’ll give the manufacturers a chance to do a demo day if the want to bring out their Hellcats or their GT500s.”