Singer's unavoidable presence quite literally hovered over the Goodwood Festival of Speed this year.Singer Vehicle DesignAt the Goodwood Festival of Speed this year, three Porsche 911s with a decided blend of modern aesthetics and retro style hung dozens of feet high in the sky, the stars of a massive artwork featured directly in front of the ancestral estate of the 11th Duke of Richmond, Charles Gordon-Lennox. The 911 as reimagined by Singer Vehicle Design has clearly become a central mainstay at Goodwood, emphasized further this year by the announcement on site of a U.S. program slated for Willow Springs International Raceway upon completion of projected improvements in 2028.To learn more about how Singer and Goodwood reached a melding of minds to launch an American version of the U.K.'s signature automotive event, I spoke with Singer Chief Strategy Officer Maz Fawaz as screams of Goodwood's hillclimb race echoed off nearby grandstands.Singer's new Classic Turbo Services Cabriolet lines up for a run at the Goodwood Festival of Speed hillclimb.Origin Stories of Singer and GoodwoodFawaz briefly brought me up to date on Singer's story, which stretches back to 2008 when founder Rob Dickinson started working on his own 1969 Porsche 911E in Los Angeles. Dickinson then founded Singer Vehicle Design in 2009 after witnessing the strong reaction to the car among Porsche aficionados. As usual in the U.K., however, Goodwood's origin traces much further back, to 1948 when the 9th Duke of Richmond first opened Goodwood Motor Circuit and held events for the British Automobile Racing Club until 1966.AdvertisementAdvertisementGoodwood then relaunched the Festival of Speed (FOS) in 1993, which now welcomes 150,000 guests for the weekend to witness everything from early horseless carriages to classic Formula 1 racing machines, modern hypercars and foreign EVs never destined to reach American shores. Goodwood Revival joined the calendar in 1998 with wheel-to-wheel racing, while Members' Meeting began a more exclusive program in 2014.Goodwood FOS now stands out as arguably the hottest automotive event of the summer globally, at least until Monterey Car Week and the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance in mid-August. Singer originally joined FOS in 2015, and now occupies facilities permanently at Bicester Heritage, to the northwest of London. There, Singer works on the DLS—for Dynamics & Lightweighting Study—that was announced in 2017 as a partnership with Williams Advanced Engineering before making its public debut, naturally, at FOS in July of 2018. Another British firm, Nicholson McLaren Engines, now builds the engines for the DLS and more recent DLS Turbo, which Singer announced in June of 2023 before showing at FOS a month later.Somewhere between a hot rod and a supercar, a DLS Turbo drew flocks of fans all three days at Goodwood.Singer's unique aesthetic as a pioneer in the restomod industry plays perfectly into the combination of style and performance that Goodwood attendees prize. Fawaz spoke to me shortly after jumping out of a DLS Turbo that he ripped up the hillclimb, as an example."The performance cars have become so incredibly high-performance," he explained, "That you need to kind of remove the driver a bit because, from an engineering perspective, it's mind-blowing what they can do, but it's not for everybody to deal with a thousand horsepower. It's just gone so far in that direction that we've become weirdly more relevant, kind of like a mechanical wristwatch. As a beautiful object, at least you can sort of understand how it works, versus, say, an Apple Watch."AdvertisementAdvertisement"If you ask me how fast DLS Turbo is, I don't know," Fawaz laughed. "It's fast, terrifying, but does that matter? I mean, you can read stats of power and torque and lap times and all of that. It's cool, but it's not what we sort of focus on. It's really about what happens when you're at 40 miles an hour, which is as important as 140 miles an hour. Or when it's parked."Now almost synonymous, Singer races multiple cars up the hillclimb each year at Goodwood, while showing new models on a stand nearby. This year featured a new Turbo Services in Cabriolet form on the paddock stand, while Singer welcomed clients and guests into the Whale's Tail hospitality suite—critically, with air conditioning to escape the sweltering heat that has also become an almost expected foe each year in the English summer.British estate architecture, 1980s Slantnose design and Singer's modern materials: A trifecta that perfectly sums up the Goodwood experience.Bringing Goodwood to the United StatesThink of Goodwood as if The Quail, A Motorsport Gathering had a race track running through it, to provide a sense of enthusiasm and spectacle missing at many of the park and show events that make up Monterey Car Week. The breadth of cars exceeds any single meet or concours at Monterey, too, yet even among true racing legends and modern hypercars from Gordon Murray Automotive, Hennessey Performance, Ruf Automobile or Red Bull Advanced Technologies, Singer somehow vaulted up to a different level."This has to be the best motor show in the world, by a long shot," Fawaz continued."Normally we bring three cars, two to go up the hill and one on the stand… Charles [Gordon-Lennox] has such an attention to detail and such a style that they manage. It's all just larger than life for us."AdvertisementAdvertisementThat's a special achievement at Goodwood, which in person feels exclusive but not quite exclusionary. A broader crowd dots the estate's varying terrain over all three days, more diverse in terms of socioeconomics, nationality and even age than most Monterey fare. For those who can't afford a Singer—in fairness, not many can—Goodwood helps to foster the stuff of dreams, potentially inspiring a lifetime of passion for automotive pursuits.The central hillclimb race runs all day, delivering the antidote to dreary park and show automotive events.Building cars is one thing, but building that kind of instantaneously recognizable brand requires a deft hand. Even the recent addition of Singer Reimagined Watches, which calls Switzerland home, fits into the mix with a similar theme of reworked vintage movements alongside fully new designs replete with the most modern engineering. Though not intended to mimic Singer's creative car projects, customers can of course choose to spec a watch to match their reimagined 911. The updates to Willow Springs will also blend a mix of classic style and modern amenities, though the refurbishment process will take plenty of time to play out."It's a long-term plan for the circuit, it takes a while, it takes years and years to make those improvements," Fawaz said. "But I don't think Southern California has a real annual car event. At least, no one's told us about one, right? So I think Willow Springs gives us the opportunity to have at least one that happens every year that everybody knows about, and is reliable."As impressive a feat as achieving almost institutional status in the U.K. seems, if Singer can prove the potential for an American vision of Goodwood at Willow Springs, the special relationship on display at FOS this year will presumably continue to grow ever stronger in the not-too-distant future. As long as the new event, and the new cars, can retain the old-world charm that made Singer a fixture at Goodwood for so many years in the first place.This article was originally published on Forbes.com