Spectators at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance check out the inner workings of a veteran Knox Open Touring car. (Photo: Ultimate Car Page)
The Pebble Beach Concours d’ Elegance, held on the 18th green of the famed Pebble Beach golf course, is held on a Sunday. Although the 61-year-old concours is a standalone event, many people now arrive a full week before to explore the racing, events, auctions and parties that surround the world’s most-famous Concours.
Just a brief history of Concours might be in order. The original Concours events, held in France, were a place to show off not only your (new or used) car, but also you wife, girlfriend or mistress (presumably not all at once) along with your children and perhaps your dog. They are, quite literally, a “contest of elegance,” the winner being chosen for being not the car with the best paint, or highest horsepower, but rather the most elegant.
World War II put an end to these events in France, but the spirit (minus the wife, kids and dogs) was revived in a few places in the U.S. after the war. When the Pebble Beach Concours d’ Elegance was first formed in the 1950s, new cars were often judged as the winners.
Fast forward to today, and without the benefit of a driver, a perpetual parking place or, in a best case scene, a personal jet pack to get around, it’s best to keep in mind that there are now so many events that you physically can’t do it all on the Monterey Peninsula during the week of the Pebble Beach Concours.
Additionally, with events that cost everywhere from free (Mondays Concours on the Avenue, Thursdays Pebble Beach Tour d’ Elegance) all the way up to $400 for a half day (Friday’s The Quail), Monterey can be a major stress on the credit cards. But for car guys and gals of all stripes, it’s a must do, a bucket-list item like no other.
The racing at Mazda Raceway at Laguna Seca is focused on vintage. This year a handful of Ferrari GTOs, (with an estimated value of $28 million to $30 million each) took to the track. There are Trans Am classes as well as a smattering of events where vintage tin gets to practice swapping paint with cars of a similar age.
The Monterey parties range from the “can’t get invited unless you know someone” to the just out-and-out pay your way in variety, and the wines from local vineyards tends to flow quite freely. Everything has a car focus, so you can expect to find representatives from current manufacturers (Lincoln, Rolls Royce, Mercedes Benz, Cadillac, Bentley and Lexus among them) plying their wares, or now in some cases, introducing new models.
This year, I went to the global unveil of the new Lexus GS. Just two hours later, the folks at Cadillac took the wraps off the Ceil, a fantastic convertible concept with “suicide” rear doors.
For many of us, the collector-car auctions tend to be a major focus. Five automotive auction houses – Bonhams, Gooding, Mecum, RM and Russo and Steele – all had events in the Monterey area. This year’s sales total will top $200 million and the world records toppled like, well, wine bottles on the Peninsula.
It’s the kind of sleep-deprived series of events that remind us of our misspent youths. Or road trips. Or perhaps even the days of driving a few hundred miles there and back to see our girlfriends when we were stationed miles away. It’s the good kind of sleep deprivation that we can spend a full year recovering from for next year’s event.
David Kinney, ASA, an American Society of Appraisers Accredited Senior Appraiser who owns and operates USAppraisal in Great Falls, Virginia, is publisher of Hagerty Price Guide and writes auction-report columns for AutoWeek, Automobile and Octane magazines.
