This weekend I went to the Greenwich, CT Concours D'Elegance car exhibition. It is a two day event and, despite being only minutes from my home, I had never attended before. I went Saturday, not realizing this was the day of domestic automobiles. There was a great assortment of pre-war sedans, Sixties muscle cars and American motorcycles. A whole convention of vintage Corvettes:
Oddball woodies and steamers.
We even walked through the tent that contained the cars that were being put up to auction Sunday - the highlight for me being a Stutz runabout
:
I realized that what I really wanted to see were the foreign cars, so I paid an extra $10 to upgrade my ticket and went back yesterday with my 5 year-old son Gabriel.
Oh.My.God! Better than any museum, the show consisted of millions of dollars of the best, fastest, most desirable automobiles on the planet - Most of which I will probably never again see in person. There were areas for British, Italian and German cars, with special paddocks filled with Ferraris and Porsches. There were elegant old saloons, prototypes and a few motorcycles. The photos could never do justice to this cornucopia of rolling art:
In the Italian camp, starting off with a vintage Lambo 350.
My only disappointment in this area was a lack of a Muria. Masarati was represented by a Ghibli, but no Bora or Merak. A couple of open wheel racers from the Trident:
Then the Ferrari area...
The red 246 Dino was Gabriel's favorite. The kid has good taste.
The Brits were well represented.
An original AC, pre-Cobra
Beautiful Morgan:
Austin Healey 3000 I think
Several Austin Martin, including this DB5:
The Germans were their usual beefy selves:
An odd Porche design:
Beautiful pre-war BMW 328 ( I would've loved to see a 507, but the modern era was represented by a couple M1, a 3.0CSI and a 2002 just like my father's )
Check out the 300 Gull Wing - Perhaps the most valuable of all the cars present!
The 300 convertible didn't look too bad either considering Mercedes sports cars usually look a little like Mack trucks next to the Italians
Speaking of the Italians...
Then the 'other stuff'...
Duck cafe racers:
One of several Rolls limos
A Ford GT, based on my favorite Class 5 racer, the GT40 ( Interestingly this car qualified as one of the few with dual heritage being shown both days. The other was a Pinnafarina body on a Corvette )
Gabriel got to sit in an Isetta 'Bubble Car':
New cars were on hand, memorably the McLaren Mercedes with a list price of a half a million dollars:
Double that and you can drive away the most expensive and fastest production car on the planet, the 1,001Hp Bugatti:
Wow!
Sorry for the low res images...
Greenwich, CT Concours D'Elegance 6/7-8/08
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