If you ever wonder if the automobile and its history are fading, check in at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Élégance. On the chic Monterey Peninsula south of San Francisco, The Lodge at Pebble Beach is the setting of what is the most prominent automobile concours in the world and a crowd that jams the field behind the famous hotel. Ranging from puffing steam cars to Indy racers to Ferraris, the rows of vintage cars are crammed for much of the day, both cooled by morning fog and basted by afternoon sunshine.
It’s called the Dawn Patrol, which has a huge crowd bumping into each other in the darkness well before sunrise, scarfing down donuts and trying to not spill coffee on one another. Why? To watch the cars as they drive onto the lawn before dawn at the Pebble Beach Concours. Hagerty Insurance provides the eats and soon the Concours pops on the lights that guide the competing cars onto the field. Waking up at 5:30 to watch this parade is very much worth the effort.
Is there a most-venerated automobile series in the hobby? We heard a number of arguments over the weekend, and most common consensus is that the supercharged straight-eight 8C Alfa Romeos of the 1930s best fits that bill. This is an 8C2900 Touring-bodied example, one of several dozen assembled at Pebble before starting a tour all the way to the Rocky Mountains.
This particular car is both very outrageous and very cool. Its official designation is 1960 Alfa Romeo Superflow IV Pininfarina coupe. The chassis is the same Alfa that Juan Manuel Fangio drove to second place in the 1952 Mille Miglia, but then became a test bed for Pininfarina designs, ending with this amazing example.
Not just a Lamborghini 350 GT, but the very first car sold by Ferruccio Lamborghini, seen here taking a prize on the awards ramp at Pebble Beach.
This huge Lincoln served U.S. presidents from Truman to Kennedy in its 17-year tenure in the White House garage. The very long machine and its plastic bubble cover also was used by Queen Elizabeth II. It traveled so often the joke was that it spent more time in the air being transported around the world than it ever did on the road. Its home today is the Henry Ford museum.
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