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The capstone event of Monterey Car Week is the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, the most prestigious car show in the world.
The Mt. Olympus of Cars
The annual Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is more than a bunch of old cars on a golf course. It is also more than a bunch of obscenely rich car collectors giving each other awards for spending obscene amounts of money on their cars. It is more because every avocation has its pinnacle; where the proverbial cream riseth to the top, where the best of the best gather to mingle, to marinate in their collective greatness, and eventually crown their champion, that immaculate exemplar of the community’s highest values. Non-automotive examples of this phenomenon include the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, the America’s Cup (yachting), and the World Yo-Yo Contest.
The Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is the most prestigious car show in the US and one of the most prestigious in the world. Held on the fairway of the 18th hole at Pebble Beach Golf Links, it is a celebration of cars where pedigree, rarity, restoration, and beauty are the coins of the realm.
History of the Pebble Beach Concours d‘Elegance
Pebble Beach has hosted the Concours d’Elegance going back to the inaugural event in 1950. The concept of a concours d’elegance, or competition of elegance, dates to 17th-century Paris and a French tradition of carriage parades. The one at Pebble Beach involving cars had its beginnings with one Sterling Edwards.
Edwards was the inheritor of the family steel cable company, that is to say he was a man of means. He was also an avid racer and SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) member. Additionally, he was a friend of Jack Morse who’d been instrumental in the establishment of the Pebble Beach Golf Links and the Del Monte Lodge on the California coast at Carmel Bay, a stone’s throw from Monterey. When Edwards got the idea of a racing event on the west coast (at the time, most competitive racing was an easter affair), he rung up Jack Morse and proposed using the Del Monte properties as the site for a race.
The first Pebble Beach Road Races were held in 1950, with the Concours as an adjunct event. It so happened that Edwards entered the car he was driving in the race to the Concours event. It was, in fact, a car he’d built, the R-26 Special Speed Roadster. Though Edwards came in fourth in the road race, with Phil Hill taking the Del Monte Trophy, he did win Best of Show the Concours event. Though the Concours has persisted into today, the road race ended after 1956 due to safety concerns following a fatal crash that year. The winner of that final race? One Carroll Shelby.
Prestige Begats Prestige
Those first few years, the winners of the Concours were contemporary cars, Edwards’ R-26, Jaguar XKs, an Austin-Healy. The first “classic” to win was in 1955, when a 1931 Pierce-Arrow 41 LeBaron Town Car took the prize. From then onwards, the Concours d’Elegance field has been made up of the highest-end collectors’ cars, typified by their rarity, unique histories, and sterling conditions representing monies spent and years, often decades, of restoration.
Bugatti’s and Mercedes-Benz have tied for the most wins, with nine apiece. Some of the best examples of past winners include the 2003 First Prize, a 1936 Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic or the 2017 winner, a 1929 Mercedes-Benz 680S Barker Tourer. Perhaps the most audacious-looking winner was the 2007 winner, a 1935 Duesenberg SJ “Mormon Meteor” Special Speedster. Bright yellow, swooping body lines, and Art Deco styling ensure this car certainly looked the part of a Concours winner. The oldest car to win at Pebble Beach was a 1913 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost London to Edinburgh Tourer that took Best of Show in 1962.
The event has seen owners repeat as winners with different cars. J.B Nethercutt, a cosmetics magnate, took Best of Show across five different decades starting in 1958 and ’59, 1969, ’70, ’80, and again in 1992. The most recent winner (2022) was a 1932 Duesenberg Model J Figoni Sports Torpedo owned by Lee R. Anderson Sr. (a seventh Best of Show win for a Duesenberg).
Monterey Car Week
The Concours d’Elegance is the capstone event of the Monterey Car Week, held each August, which includes auctions (by Mecum and RM Sotheby’s), and numerous other car shows like the Concorso Italiano, Exotic’s on Boadway, The Quail, Legends of the Autobahn, and even the ironical Concours d’Lemons, among others. Many of the events are free and spending this week in Carmel-By-The-Sea, Pacific Grove, or Monterey guarantees the best car spotting on the planet. This year’s Monterey Car Week began on the 11th of August and runs through this Sunday the 20th, culminating in the crowning of the winner of the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.
