University celebrates city's car heritage with a free motoring extravaganza

Coventry will be going car crazy this summer with a celebration of the city’s motoring heritage set to take place on Saturday 9th June.

Coventry Car Day, which is being organised by Coventry University, will celebrate the great cars of the past and present – particularly those with a link to the city – and will look ahead to the vehicles of the future.

A host of prestigious cars – including Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Jaguars – will be lined up in University Square (opposite the cathedral steps) and around the University’s new £32m student building, The Hub – which will also play host to a motor industry careers fair and symposium on the future of the car.

Autocar magazine editor-in-chief Steve Cropley, who is a visiting professor at the University, will chair a free-to-attend questions and answers session in the afternoon with a panel of automotive industry experts. The event will also mark the return of the annual Bugatti Lecture.

Coventry Car Day will feature:

• a free motor show with a host of cars from marques such as Ferrari, Jaguar Land Rover, Lamborghini, Mercedes-Benz and Ariel;
• a Q&A session for members of the public to ask questions and share thoughts with automotive industry luminaries;
• a symposium (for which tickets will be sold) to debate the future of the car, with a keynote speech from former Jaguar chief executive Sir John Egan;
• a motor industry careers fair offering advice from employers and industry bodies on automotive careers.

Andrew Noakes, associate senior lecturer on the Automotive Journalism MA degree at Coventry University, said:

This is going to be a fantastic free day out for car fans in Coventry. It will be exciting to see some new cars fresh from the Geneva motor show, and a host of other cars vintage and modern. The careers event will be a great opportunity for anyone who wants to work in the motor industry, with free advice from automotive employers and our team from the University.

Brian Clough, senior lecturer in Automotive Design, added:

Coventry graduates drive car design at all kinds of car companies, from Rolls-Royce, Bentley and Aston Martin to Jaguar, Land Rover, Nissan and Ford. We’re delighted to be bringing some of them back to the city for the symposium to debate the future of the car.

For the latest updates on Coventry Car Day, please click here.

Automotive research and teaching at Coventry University

Coventry University offers the widest range of automotive research and teaching expertise of any university – covering the fields of design, engineering, business and media – and students from its courses have been graduating into leading roles in the automotive professions for over 30 years.

As well as Coventry’s globally-renowned industrial design courses – which have produced graduates such as Mark Fetherston (lead designer for the Mercedes-Benz) and John Iley (leading F1 aerodynamicist) – the School of Art and Design delivers the world’s only MA degree in Automotive Journalism, devised and run by a team of experienced current and former car magazine editors.

In 2007 the Department of Industrial Design was awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education for ‘Educating tomorrow’s leaders in automotive design’, and in 2005 was recognised as having the UK’s only Transport and Product Design Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).

For further information, please contact Alex Roache, External Press & Media Relations Officer, Coventry University, on +44 (0)24 7679 5050 or email alex.roache@coventry.ac.uk.