We go back to Pebble Beach one more time, and again return amazed at the show and the unusual and beautiful cars on display! At Pebble Beach there are always cars that I’ve never seen before, and the best of the best restoration quality.
And we begin with the Dawn Patrol, in which everyone wakes up an hour earlier than usual, and eats the Hagerty doughnuts and drinks the Hagerty coffee, and waits for the Hagerty Dawn Patrol hats! If you hadn’t figured this out, Hagerty insurance sponsors it, and it is obviously a very popular event!
Dawn breaks, with the unusual feature of a visible sky! Usually it’s overcast. And this requires us to shoot from the water side so the light is working for the camera.
First car on the field, a Ferrari
The Incredible Fiat 8V Supersonic by Ghia. Wow! Note the bumpers.
The “50 Years of Shelby Mustang” Class made it’s way on the field!
The speedometer of a Ferrrari Lusso is in the center of the dash, so you need someone to ride in the center to tell you how fast you’re going!
In Preservation class, a 1926 Packard 236 Eight Phaeton
1920 Stutz Bearcat series H
Sir bitte schließen Sie die Türen, wenn Sie fahren!
1929 DuPont model G Waterhouse Roadster.
1933 Lincoln KB Dietrich Convertible Sedan.
1938 Graham Model 97 Saoutchik Convertible. Wow!
1950 Rolls Royce Silver Wraith by H.J. Mulliner
Only 3 Venti-Ports? too bad the original owner didn’t step up for the Roadmaster and get the 4th venti-port! Alright, it’s not a Buick! It’s actually a Ferrari 340 Mexico Roadster, for which the original owner ( and surely the current one!) stepped up indeed!
1935 SS Cars SS1 Saloon
Porsche’s entry into the World of Outlaws sprint car racing? No, but it’s the earliest – 1955 – Porsche ever fitted with an aerodynamic wing by Michael May.
1953 Ferrari 212 Inter Pinin Farina coupe, in Ferrari preservation class. There were an astonishing 9 cars in Ferrari Preservation class!
Ferrari California spyder
And speaking of Ferrari preservation class, here’s my favorite, the 1961 California Spyder that was hidden in a Garage in France for Decades, only to be auctioned off this year with a number of other cars. At one point it was owned by French film star Alain Delon, who was photographed with Hollywood starlets , and kept the car in Monaco, all very glamorous. Later it was owned by Roger Baillon, a french businessman, who in later years hid the car in a garage covered with magazines. They’ve obviously gotten it running, and they displayed it on the lawn with the stack of magazines that had been on top of the trunk!
A Cunningham
1932 Packard 904 Deluxe 8 Dietrich stationary coupe. Wow!
A very interesting class of Mercury Customs was shown!
1936 Duesenberg J Rollston Convertible Berline. Note the pontoon fenders, separate runningboards, and Packard Headlights, and Cadillac hood louvers, all part of the original design by Rollston.
The shooter gets shot! Pebble Beach is a photo shooter’s paradise, but it’s also a tangled web of intersecting photo angles – there are so many people taking photos at any one time that it’s hard to stay out of other people’s photos. That’s why I like the early hours with the cars driving by, because there’s just barely enough room to get an un-obstructed photo of the entire car.
1930 Packard Speedster Phaeton. Packard’s factory hot rod, with dual throat carburetor, finned manifold, and many other high performance features.
Here’s the Packard 626 Speedster Roadster from 1929 – one of only a handful built, and one of only 3 thought to remain.
The eventual first place winner of the American Classic Open Class, the 1931 Chrysler CG Imperial dual cowl phaeton by LeBaron.
1934 Packard V-12 1108 Dietrich convertible sedan.
75 Years of Lincoln Continental! This one a 1962 Sedan. The clean, modernistic look with minimal chrome was a tremendous change in ’61 when it was introduced. Compare this with a ’61 Cadillac, Buick, or Chrysler Imperial, and see a design revolution.
1930 Duesenberg Murphy Convertible Coupe.
1934 Duesenberg Walker LaGrande Convertible coupe. All three of the three Walker-LaGrande convertible coupes were on the lawn!
My favorite Bugatti of all time, the 1939 Bugatti type 57C Vanvooren Cabriolet. Note the windshield that cranks down to the belt line!
1956 Maserati A6G 2000 Frua Coupe. Another of the French barn finds collected by Roger Baillon, now running and on the field!
1934 Packard 1108 Twelve Dietrich Stationary coupe
An earlier Dietrich coupe, a 1928 443 Packard.
1970 Mercedes C-111
1911 Mercer Raceabout – the famous Austie Clark car.
1964 Ferrari 250 LM Scaglietti Berlinetta. One of the Ferraris that raced at LeMans in 1965.
1931 LaSalle 345-A Fleetwood 7 Passenger Touring. Being piloted by the owner of 59 years, and just fresh from its second restoration.
1934 Packard 1108 LeBaron Sport Phaeton. Stunning!
It was DuPont Feature year !
1929 duPont Model G Merrimac special sedan – wow look at that Vee Windshield! Owned by one of the duPonts. Many of the duPont automobiles are in the hands of the duPont family.
It was Cunningham Feature year, so here is the 1953 Cunningham C-5R – recorded at 154 Miles per hour on the Mulsanne straight that year. If you’re reading this you certainly already know where the Mulsanne straight is !
1934 Duesenberg Walker-LaGrande.
It was Pope feature year, so here’s a Pope-Hartford
1913 Pope-Hartford