The good folk at Pebble Beach pass out a little pocket sized guide of the cars shown at Pebble Beach and it is an invaluable guide for fellow Carnuts to learn about the entries.
By Cam Hutchins
Click here to read the car guide>>
By the Numbers the 2023 Pebble Beach Concours d Elegance is the 72th Concours since it’s inception in 1950, this year had 27 Classes of car judged by at least 56 official Judges and 15,000 unofficial judges and there were 116 cars to make everyone more than 100% happy.
The was 87 years between the newest car, a 1995 McLaren F1 Coupe, and the oldest, a 1908 Beno, 105 HP, Prinz Heinrich Two Seat Race Car, There were cars that had very few built such as the 1958 MacMinn Le Mans Coupe, built by Strother MacMinn a long time pebble Beach Judge.
As a Canadian I am always on the lookout for Canadian Content and the 1981 Lamborghini Countach LP400S in the Clss L2 postwar preservation class has the light bar on top that it had when it was a “Intervention car” at the Monaco Grand Prix when Fellow Canadian Gilles Villeneuve won the race.
I ran into Dave Kinney and he was there along with the students of MacPherson College from Kansas, who had fully restored a 1953 Mercedes Benz 300S Cabriolet. I got to speak briefly with John Carlson as he was Judging, Nigel Matthews who also was judging and Valentino Balboni, the test driver for Lamborghini for 40 years!!!
Having a big love of racing cars, the exact opposite of the 1995 McLaren F1 Coupe was the 1965 MacLaren M1A Race Car owned by Egon and Birgit Zweimuller of Austria. It has it’s own Canadian content, the MacLaren M1A was introduced in Canada at the 1964 Canadian Grand Prix on September 26 1964. Chris Amon got it’s first wins in the M1A at Silverstone and Quebec and MacLaren himself raced a M1A throughout 1965. One of the M1A’s was even bought by Elvis Presley for a princely sum of $9,446.96 and it was driven in the Elvis movie “Spin Out”. Elvis was forbidden by the studio to actually go racing.
Seeing these cars and looking into their past is often astonishing. After WWII, the Spanish Government was eager to get their car and truck industry back on track. The building of a 150 mph high-performance sports car may not have been what every citizen needed, but the 1954 Pegaso Z-102 was at one time the fastest production car in the world. Six of the Z-102 were built by Touring of Milan with 2.8 litre engines and 4 twin throat carbs, but the bodies were all a it different from each other.
The 1929 Horch 855 Special Roadster has retained it Bullet Proof windshield but the side windows have been replaced with conventional glass as the heavy bullet-proof glass caused the doors to sag. A bullet proof convertible? Lee and Joan Herrington from New Hampshire displayed their 1966 Ferrari 330 GTC Pininfarina Coupe Speciale with wide rocker side vents, and hidden door handles along the side windows.
I know a couple of the Judges from the show and John Carlson I have known for almost 50 years and Nigel Matthews I have know for a couple of decades, but there is a reason why I like to shoot cars and not judge them. I looked at all the amazing cars and did not even hazard a guess that the car that would win is the 1937 Mercedes Benz 540K Special Roadster. I am such a bad judge as Mercedes have won the last two years as well! My guess, for what it is worth would of been the 1932 Alfa Romeo 8C23 Figoni Cabriolet or the 1939 Delahaye 165 Figoni et Falaschi Cabriolet. It is one of 3 examples known to exist and it has a special covered spare tire and is the “Long tail” version. The proud owner is a Jim Patterson out of Kentucky, but it was originally owned by the King of Afghanistan and survived WWII at the Afghanistan Embassy in France and came to the US in 1953.
All I can say id there are different horses for different courses and all the pretty Horses were proudly displayed in the 2023 Pebble Beach Concours d Elegance.
