Petrol & Pride proves the inclusive car festival you never knew you needed

Petrol & Pride revved to life last Friday (25 July) at the British Motor Museum in Gaydon, bringing together over 350 LGBTQ+ car lovers and industry allies. With support from major manufacturers like Bentley, Jaguar and McLaren, Attitude publisher and lifelong car fanatic Darren Styles OBE takes you through the day, buckle up your seat belts.

When I bought Attitude back in 2015, and became this celebrated title’s first gay owner in its decades-long history, I supposed – for a while anyhow – that it would bring the curtain down on a career in and around the motor industry that dated all the way back to 1983. 

I’d been, variously, a staff writer, contributor, Editor and publisher on car magazines of all shapes and sizes and – save for a two-year spell as Renault UK’s Press Communications Manager in the early 1990s – there had always been an outlet for my petrolhead passion in written form. Now, it seemed, at the helm of Attitude, it would be more McFly than McLaren, more bent than Bentley.

“You can’t keep a good motoring man down”

But you can’t keep a good motoring man down, and before too long I’d snuck a car page into our hallowed publication, sold into the team on the basis that we “needed to create an editorial environment that would encourage automotive advertisers to support us.” 

It also ensured a continued string of press demonstrator cars for yours truly, and occasional invitations to fabulous destinations to drive fabulous cars. I didn’t get where I am today etc…

What I didn’t envisage (how could I?) was that, over the ensuing ten years, the motor industry I’d known as a sometimes challenging environment for those as interested in the men within it as the cars they were designing and producing would come to realise that reflecting the diversity of the customers they sought to attract might be a good thing, both commercially and socially.

“The sun shone, though nonetheless a rainbow was formed”

Over time, Attitude came to develop valued and long-term partnerships with the like of Jaguar, Bentley and Peugeot, and relationships with a dozen more global car brands. Many of whom, when the notion of a gathering for the LGBTQ+ community’s car enthusiasts was floated by Attitude’s Cliff Joannou to Bentley’s communications guru, Wayne Bruce, said they’d support it.

So, in Wayne’s fair hands and aided by colleagues at event agency Goose, Petrol & Pride was born (cars with plugs also welcome). And, last Friday, it happened in some style: 200+ cars disgorging more than 350 guests onto the concourse at the British Motor Museum at (where else?) Gaydon, near Coventry.

The sun shone, though nonetheless a rainbow was formed as you’ll see in the pictures here, stories were swapped and prizes given to cars as diverse as an orange-wheeled Vauxhall Frontera rescued from a front garden (garnered with a MoT only days before) to a second-generation metallic yellow Volkswagen Golf GTi convertible.

“A bunch of car nuts, stood about beneath an azure sky”

For once, though, it really wasn’t about the winning, and truly all about the taking part. Just a bunch of car nuts, stood about beneath an azure sky getting as excited about the unexceptional as the multi-million supercars dotted about. Even if those car nuts included Bentley’s CEO Frank Walliser, out to show support in a burnt orange Continental GT, and Lister CEO Lawrence Whittaker with his decalled LFT-666.

At a time when some corporates think twice about supporting diversity and inclusion, support from manufacturers including Alpine, Aston Martin, Bentley, Dacia, Genesis, Jaguar, McLaren, Peugeot, Renault, Rolls-Royce, Scania, Skoda and Volkswagen was a joy to behold, and the organisers’ pledge to create an event “for all car enthusiasts that are members or allies of the LGBTQ+ community to show our collective love for and pride in both our cars and each other” was a promise fulfilled.

Same time next year? We’re already planning it. Keep an eye on www.petrolandpride.co.uk.