What fascinates a man who has seen it all? A Bugatti Veyron

My father was never too interested in cars, but he has always liked things. Contraptions fascinate him, whether they are aircraft from the Second World War, or lawn mowers, or CD players. If it spins, or vibrates, or moves, or takes an input and produces an output, he will stare at it with a watchful gaze, processing the motions of its mechanics, not always particularly interested in how it works, but seemingly overwhelmed with gratitude that it does.

My father is 79 years old. He is retired and lives in the countryside, while I am not retired and live in London. Time spent with him is rare and will get rarer, because that is what happens when people get older. What it also means is that he has seen a great many things; the Moon Landings, the assassination of JFK, the Falklands War, the trial of O. J. Simpson, and so on. What he has not seen, and was almost certainly not even aware of, is a Bugatti Veyron.

As we prowled the tiered parterre garden behind Heveningham Hall in Suffolk, weaving in and out of various Ferraris, Porsches, Bentleys and Astons Martin, I had the pleasure of being his tour guide. We stopped by the new Ferrari F80, which was described as ‘looking a bit like something from Miami Vice’. I explained how the Cosworth V12 in the Gordon Murray T.50 is one of the fastest and highest revving road-car engines ever made. I tried, and likely failed, to explain the difference between AC and Shelby Cobras.

We compared the elegance of both the original Mercedes 300 SL ‘Gullwing’ and its more modern interpretation, the SLS. I droned on about how a Ferrari F40 was the last car that Enzo Ferrari had ever signed off on, or how a Porsche 911 with lots of modifications and a big wing at the back wasn’t actually a Porsche at all, but something called a Singer DLS Turbo and how it cost many millions of pounds. I pointed at a Peugeot Type 15 Double Phaeton from 1898 and asked my father if that was the car he grew up in, because we like to have a laugh every now and then.

All of these things were interesting to me, but what was fascinating to him was the Veyron. I explained that it was the first production road car to produce 1,000bhp, and it was powered by two V8 engines welded together to create something called a W16. I told him that the indicator stalks were made of magnesium. He nodded and his eyes were wide. ‘And how fast can it go?’, he asked. ‘About 250mph,’ I replied. ‘Wow’. And then we moved on to the next thing.

Heveningham Hall is one of Suffolk’s finest buildings, and as much as it is the work of Sir Robert Taylor and James Wyatt, it is mostly the work of Jon Hunt. He purchased the Grade I-listed house in 1994 and has since spent millions on restoring and renovating the building. He also returned the gardens and grounds of some 500 acres to original plans laid out by Capability Brown. As ‘large country piles’ go, it is difficult to think of one in better condition than Heveningham, and it is also why it is such an apt landscape for this particular concours. The themes of restoration, renovation and elegance are consistent, from the front bonnet of Nick Mason’s Ferrari 250GTO to the Grade I-listed orangery. It is worth having nice things and there is value beyond money in looking after them.

A ‘Concours d’Élégance’ is a zoo, and the exhibits are made out of metal and meat. I have been to plenty and they roughly follow a similar pattern, which is that various millionaires and billionaires show off their prizes of great value and provenance and then have a lovely party at the end to congratulate themselves. At most, there is an invisible barrier between ‘us’ and ‘them’, but that is also part of the allure. Like a zoo, or museum, these are things that we do not expect to see, but take pleasure on the rare occasions that we do. The other difference is that when you go to look at a nice painting in the National Gallery, you wouldn’t expect to find its owner standing next to it, enjoying a nice glass of Champagne. Like Halloween, a concours is when that invisible line between us and them is at its most transient, and at Heveningham it is very transient indeed.

Much of the great and the good of Suffolk are here this weekend, as the show runs concurrently with the Heveningham Hall Country Fair. While the restrained magnificence of the car collecting world hides behind the main house, out front, JCBs dance and steam engines roar and whistle, while young children with faces painted like tigers bury their faces in spun sugar.

Conservation and restoration is more than just looking after old fancy buildings and old fancy cars. In this period of nationwide malaise, where it feels that so much isn’t working the way it’s supposed to, it’s also about preserving, restoring and conserving a sense of community. Not only does the Heveningham Concours and Country Fair give the locals something to do, but it also raises money for various local charities.

Further afield, the nearby Wilderness Reserve is also under the auspices of Hunt, who aims to conserve and re-wild the 4,500-acre Sibton Park estate, underwriting the efforts by providing high-end luxury guesthouses where sheep will wander in through open doors and the windows vibrate with birdsong. It sits in stark contrast to the formal lawns and pastures of Hunt’s home; an ecological yang to the man-made yang of Heveningham.

The concours event is not large and it is not long before my father is tired and in need of a glass of Pimm’s. We find a space to sit overlooking Horsepower Hill, where various drivers compete to reach the highest top speed along one of the private roads that webs across the Capability Brown parkland. The winner this year is a Porsche Taycan Turbo GT Weissach, which rips up to 127mph. A disgruntled spectator complains that an electric car is ‘cheating’ and I am sure plenty in attendance are inclined to agree with him.

Electric Porsches aside, the grounds resonate with the sound of petrol and pistons, as everything from an Aston Martin Valkyrie to modified Ford Fiestas fresh from a McDonald’s carpark races up the hill in a cloud of tire smoke. Overhead, a P-51 Mustang, the ‘Cadillac of the Sky’, swirls, dipping its wings at the assembled spectators below.

I ask my father what his favourite car of the day has been. Was it the Best-in-Show winner Bentley Blower No. 1, from 1929? Nick Mason’s Ferrari 250GTO, one of the world’s most iconic cars? A Jaguar XK120 Roadster perhaps. But his mind returned to the Bugatti Veyron. He wasn’t particularly interested in the price, the provenance, or how it worked. It just looked quite cool. It was a contraption, a machine with a purpose, that spins and vibrates and drives very quickly, but could also play his Bob Marley CD. It didn’t win a prize, and it wasn’t the most exotic car there, but that wasn’t the point. It was something he’d never seen before, which at his age, is a gift that is difficult to give.

My father was never too interested in cars, but I always have been. I remember when the Veyron first appeared, as whispers, then in a triumphant roar, in 2005. The idea of a road car having 1,000bhp was beyond exciting to a 12-year-old, who would spend his Sunday evenings watching Top Gear while his parents played bridge downstairs. It was one of many posters on my walls, and I have never got bored of seeing a Veyron in the flesh.

And so what was just another car show became something more special. A moment where my father finally understood why it was that I cared so much. As we paced up and down the immaculately presented tiers, and I pointed and explained the things that made each car special, I could see a genuine interest in his eyes and a sense of wonder. I never cared that he didn’t care about cars, but for one afternoon, we were on the same page. A special moment, in a special setting, surrounded by special things.

Heveningham Concours and the Heveningham Hall Country Fair will take place on June 26-27, 2027.