This week the 25th annual Festival of Speed was held at Goodwood House in West Sussex – a major motorsport event featuring the latest racers, championship drivers and incredible displays of classic cars… like these Porsches.

For these 25 years, British artist and designer Gerry Judah, has been commissioned to create the spectacular centrepiece sculpture for the event. This year celebrates 70 years since the Porsche 356 was first introduced in 1948.

So, the sculpture stands in front of Goodwood House at 52 metres high (as high as Nelson’s Column), towering high above the entire event. One single narrow spine, starting at only 98 millimetres wide on the ground, shoots vertically to explode into seven pointed spindles, on which six iconic Porsches sit dramatically at each end, with the seventh spindle pointing sharply into the sky.

The cars displayed are:

• 356 – the first Porsche produced in 1948
• 917 – an endurance racer as driven by Steve McQueen in the 1971 film “Le Mans”
• 959 Paris Dakar rally winner from 1987
• 918 Spyder—a hybrid road car from 2015
• 919 Le Mans Prototype from 2015
• 911R— a limited edition road car introduced in 2016 representing the latest in Porsche design.

As I’m sure the owners are thinking, I hope those nuts & bolts are tight!

Gerry Judah’s installations can be seen in the Imperial War Museum, St Paul’s Cathedral and the India High Commission as well as international locations such as Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea and an entrance sculpture outside the Porscheplatz Museum in Zuffenhausen, Stuttgart, and as you can see in his portfolio, he has ‘form’ when it comes to hanging cars!