TRACK TEST
Is an XK8 fast and nimble enough to cope with a hillclimb? We take our 4.0litre coupe to the 1.45m-long Harewood Speed course to find out
FROM C-types to F-TYPEs, road cars to racing cars, over the two and half decades I’ve been writing about cars for a living, I’ve driven all kinds of vehicles on all kinds of racetracks. But the one variety of car I haven’t driven on a circuit is my own.
I’ve often thought about using my XK8 for a track day; with 270bhp it should certainly be fast enough. But the idea of putting too much stress on the now 22-year-old coupe as I pound round and round in circles or crashing Nicholas Latifi-style into the barrier has always deterred me.
And then I remember hillclimbs. Offering all the thrills and excitement of a track day but with less pressure to drive flat-out over long periods of time, they seem the perfect compromise. With JEC TrackSport organising an event at the Harewood Speed Hillclimb in North Yorkshire, it was time I added my XK8 to that long list.
Two things strike me when I arrive at Harewood, a few miles north of Leeds; firstly, how amazing the views are from the top of the paddock. With this being a clear day, I reckon I can see all the way to York. And secondly, despite growing up just 50 miles to the north, why have I never heard of it before? Other than the littleknown fact that actor Sir Ben Kingsley hails from Scarborough, the Harewood Speed Hillclimb is clearly one of Yorkshire’s bestkept secrets.
The hillclimb was created in 1962 by Arnold Burton who, as well as owning the tailoring chain that was founded by his father, Sir Montague Maurice Burton, in 1903, was also a keen motoring enthusiast, competing in the Alpine, Tulip and Monte Carlo rallies. Originally 1,097m long, the hillclimb was extended to its current 1,448m in the mid-Eighties, making it the longest hillclimb in mainland Britain.
Yet that isn’t what the course is most famous for but rather that it runs through the middle of Stockton Farm which Burton had acquired from the Harewood Estate in the early Fifties. Together with its remote location, amazing views and genteel atmosphere, it’s as different from the razzmatazz of the Goodwood Festival of Speed as Mallory Park is from Silverstone.
I can also tell by the cars that are slowly arriving that this is going to be a very different event from the hardcore track days I’m used to. Ranging from a beautiful XK 120 FHC to a nearly new I-PACE, they’re largely standard and in some cases, highly valuable road cars. Apart from Andy Harper’s racing XJ2.7 we featured in the July 2022 issue [p54] that is, which looks as out of place as Usain Bolt would at a school sports day. There’s another couple of XK8s and I consider wishing their owners good luck but I’m sure they’d look at me blankly, having more confidence i
