It’s a car-lovers dream: driving a Lamborghini along the fabled Mille Miglia in Italy and visiting both Le Mans in France and the Goodwood Festival of Speed in England

My story begins in that other sunburnt place, South Africa.

I am nine years old. My dad teaches me to drive a beach buggy on an abandoned airfield. My love affair with cars begins. They are symbols of a childhood; a distant, happy life; memories frozen in fragments of time. They are memories of shapes and smells and textures, of speed and sound. I grow up lusting after cars; I am not normal you see; I see things in the shapes of cars that other men see in the curves of women.

What is more exciting then, than when a friend, Kelly Silverthorn, phones to invite me to Bologna, Italy. We are to test drive a Lamborghini Gallarda Spyder along the fabled Mille Miglia, then, to go on to Le Mans in France for the even more fabled racing series.

“We gotta go, man, we gotta go! But only if we top it off with Goodwood!” (The Goodwood Festival of Speed is an event held on the property of Lord March, Near Chichester in southwestern England.)

And so, we intrepid travellers set off. Lamborghini very graciously puts us up at the Hotel Commercianti on the Pallazza Maggiore. We buy Italian shoes and walk the streets of Bologna, the city of towers and tortellini. We sit in ancient city squares at night, drinking Prosecco from little ice-frosted glasses. We believe the beautiful women are in fact looking at us. We drive through Tuscany along the Mille Miglia and indeed through Florence, duelling with crazed Italians on scooters. We drive a 520 bhp supercar, yet are overtaken by Kangoos, a little Renault delivery van.

What can live up to this? We take the train and speed through the night to Paris and beyond. Le Mans is a throng of 300,000 people. It is a place of noise and cars. We watch in awe. We see the diesel Audis hurtle effortlessly down the track in eerie silence. In comparison, the other cars just seem to be trying too hard. In their respective classes, Porsche and Aston Martin beat Ferrari and Corvette, for faint glory. Peugeot, also in diesel cars, is second overall, after Audi. Our intrepid journalists seek out the team they are following, the Chamberlain-Synergy team, with a Lola car, which finishes the “24 Heures du Mans” honourably. We get to see, in person, our own Canadian hero, Jacques Villeneuve. It is gratifying to see he is also short and balding, albeit a lot younger than us. All in all, a great event, and history in the making, with the absolute dominance of the diesel cars. We get to see all the past winners in the museum and buy a few souvenirs. It is time to move on to Goodwood, perhaps the greatest event of them all.

With Le Mans and Europe fast fading in our rear view mirrors and memories, we head for Goodwood. We think back fondly on Bologna, the Italian people, the food, the drivers and the scooters. We find it hard to believe that we drove a Gallardo through the heart of Tuscany and, even better, Florence. We marvel at the magic of the Mille Miglia. We agree that France was less vibrant, and Le Mans somewhat impersonal. We miss our wives and children.

We arrive in England and find it has lost its charm of our youth. We pine for Italy.

We pin our hopes on Goodwood. We wash our hair and put on clean shirts. We shall go to Goodwood.

What have we learned?

We have learned that the point of life lies in the living of it. We have learned that middle- aged-men are invisible to young women. We have learned that looking at cars is a sublimation for looking at things you cannot have. We have learned that beauty is not only sheet-metal deep. We have learned that the patina of age is an acquired taste, but ultimately more satisfying.

We have agreed not to live our lives in desperation. We shall find meaning in things banal.

We discover that the Goodwood Festival of Speed is indeed the greatest event of them all. It is intimate and stylish. It is exciting and up close. We stand gobsmacked at the sights and sounds. We recognize Sir Sterling Moss. We are amazed that you can walk among five of the six Bugatti Royales ever built. We touch D-types and the only remaining XJ13. We admire Maserati “birdcages,” DBRs, the John Player Specials of our schooldays, the six-wheel Tyrrell-Cosworth, the Silk Cut Jaguars, the Blitzen Benz, Ferraris galore, and an achingly beautiful Alfa Romeo race car we never knew existed.

We listen to Jim Clark’s Grand Prix Lotus car’s banshee shriek up the Hill Climb. We see a turbine car that makes us think of a flightless bird. We see a radial engined car, never having contemplated such a possibility. We smile at the Milliken “Camber Car.” We see the Le Mans winners of the week before, having been flown in for the event. We walk through the forest, watching the rally cars flying past, driven by desperadoes. We walk through grassy paddocks displaying rare and beautiful cars. We see countless displays, and gratefully experience the hospitality of our hosts. Indeed this is the greatest event of them all.

We vow to be back.

We know that the Goodwood Revival is in the fall. We scheme this way and that way . . . how will we manage it? We hear the stories told: how the Goodwood race track came into being on the roads around the Second World War airfield; how only vehicles before 1966 are allowed on the premises; how every one dresses up in period costume; and above all, how there are displays of old aircraft in the infield, including, the icon of icons, the Spitfire.

And, I must confess, in my heart of hearts, I love aircraft more than I love cars and motorcycles.

And so, my story ends. Here I am back home and driving my five-year-old daughter to school. She is babbling as usual and tells me of a friend’s mom who cannot drive.

“Don’t worry, Emmie,” I say. “I’ll teach you to drive.”

“Daddy!” she says, “Don’t you know? I never want to drive! I want to be kind to Mother Earth!”

Heinie Coetze is a GP from Victoria who cannot decide what is more sexy, a Ferrari Dino or Nicole Kidman.