Some of us are car enthusiasts and some of us aren’t.

One of the United Kingdom’s top annual events for car enthusiasts – and has been since 1993 – is the Goodwood Festival of Speed, held in the grounds of Goodwood House, in West Sussex.

Many Welsh people make the pilgrimage, and in 2010 its status as one of the big events where the public can see cars for the first time generated renewed interest.

Before the serious time trials where some illustrious professional racing drivers blast up a 1.16-mile hillclimb driving or riding some hugely valuable and often historically significant machinery, for this year’s event, the public were invited behind the wheel of a new car at the Moving Motor Show.

On Thursday, July 2, the day before the main event, many car manufacturers offered people the chance to try before they buy. Or not as the case may have been.

Having been to the Festival of Speed pretty much every year since 2002 – usually as a paying car enthusiast customer – I was planning a visit at the weekend.

But a couple of days before, I was offered an opportunity that was too good to pass up. I was asked if I “fancied a run up the hill”.

In previous years looking on as motor racing legends tore up the hill in legendary machinery, I never imagined I would join them, even though I knew some places in cars were taken by us ‘civilian’ journalists.

My job would be to take a car based on one of the lowest emitting models on sale in the UK, and the smallest conventionally powered car due to be driven up the hill.

It would be a Toyota iQ. Perhaps not directly associated with Wales, but the iQ’s larger siblings in the range are powered by Welsh engines. The Auris, Verso and Avensis use 1.6-litre and 1.8-litre petrol engines built at the manufacturer’s Deeside factory.

But this was not an ordinary IQ. It was a supercharged version of the 1.33-litre model, stripped out with a roll cage and racing seats. It was part of a project looking at how Toyota might engineer high-performance versions in the future as well as a feasibility study into running a one-make series.

It could also lead to aftermarket packs for customers inspired by the hot version.
Anyway, back to Goodwood, and I discovered from my Twitter feed that Formula One World Champion Jenson Button would be leading the run I would be participating in driving a vivid orange McLaren 12C road car.

And five-time Le Mans winner Derek Bell. And former British Touring Car Champion Tim Harvey, as well as a few other illustrious names would also be joining us.

Described by Goodwood as a “challenging, white-knuckled 1.16-mile course” and while there’s the relatively open drive past Goodwood House passing thousands of spectators, about halfway up the view to the left is dominated by a large and potentially painful looking wall just a couple of metres from the track.

But most pressing on my mind at the start-line was hoping I didn’t stall it in front of thousands of people and hold up proceedings.

Luckily, with enough wheelspin to draw attention to the little iQ to anyone that might have been distracted, I set off up the hill.

Although it’s supercharged, it was difficult to detect any mechanical whine from it over the rasp from the exhaust. Although the car was tiny, it made a big noise and felt every inch a race car, with razor-sharp responses and amazing levels of grip.

What was my time? With far less horsepower than the rest of the petrol powered cars on the run (almost 900bhp less than one of the cars) I had no aspiration to record a time.

But although this was technically called the Supercar Run and the iQ isn’t really a supercar, but it was perhaps appropriate for a Welshman that my first Festival of Speed hillclimb was in a car with an albeit tenuous Welsh connection.

By Simon Harris