Palm Beach, 27th of January, 2018

Already for the 27th time the Concours at the Breakers was the highlight of the Cavallino Classic and what date would have matched better than the 27th of January. After two rather quiet days at the track the main event again attracted a lot of great cars to the lawn of the famous Breakers hotel in the posh beach town of Palm Beach. For decades the winter domicile of the rich American there might be no better location to hold a Ferrari Concours in January than in Palm Beach.

Early in the morning, well before sunrise the first cars came down the driveway of the hotel to get in line for the setup on the three lawns, the upper for the vintage car section, the middle for the themed cars and the 275/330/365 range and the lower lawn for the modern classics with the prancing horse.

Naturally the upper lawn with the rare coach built examples of the Colombo and Lampredi V12 attract the most interest as these are the cars that formed the legend of the marque from Maranello. This year’s selection was outstanding again although a lot of cars were seen in the past at the same place or other concours and few of the cars actually made their post restoration debuted at Cavallino. Nevertheless one could walk past no less than three California Spyder with two LWB and a later SWB version, a wide selection of 212 Inter and Export models from coachbuilders like Pininfarina, Vignale and even Ghia as the little Cabriolet attracted most interest although the bystanders certainly had a difficult decision to make whether they like the design or not. They all had in common that it was outstanding and so were the judges as the car won numerous awards for his proud owner. More conventional were the Ferrari 250 GTO and SWB Berlinettas with the exception of the Bertone bodied SWB that shares a lot of design elements with the Jet also built by Bertone on an Aston Martin DB4 GT Chassis. Being less curvy and pleasing it is not a surprise that the Pininfarina Design was favored in the time and became the main design partner of Ferrari in the following years when the different coach built versions of the Ferrari Chassis were replaced by standard bodywork versions and the design of PF certainly helped Ferrari to build the myth that follows the marque to the present day. America was always a big market for Ferrari since Chinetti imported the first cars to the US and some cars were even built for the overseas market as the Superamerica as seen on two 400 SA on the field.

Earlier in the 1950s the name America was used for some of the bigger engined models suitable for the cruising speed on the freeway and the middle lawn with the theme of the Cover cars had several examples on display. On more than 220 covers during the last 40 years of existence of the Cavallino Magazine a lot of iconic cars graced the cover and some of them could be seen today in a mouthwatering display of Maranello’s finest. It is actually no surprise that all of the major three awards could be seen here starting with the Best of GT winning 250 GT Speciale of Lee Herrington that was formerly owned by Prince Bernhard from the Netherlands and featured a lot of design elements that could be seen on other cars to follow. Last year the Best of Competition winning 212 Export Touring Barchetta of Thomas Peck made its debuted in Pebble Beach after being brought back to original configuration as it was alternated for the movie “Racers” with Kirk Douglas.

As the Cavallino Concours also is part of the Best of the Best selection that will be crowned in a few days in Paris as the Best of numerous prestigious Concours winners on different events in 2017 this year there was another award “above” the two known winners, the actual Best of Show on the field. A few cars come to mind when talking about beauty, provenance and rarity but maybe none of them matches one of the greatest Ferrari ever built, the Zagato bodied 250 GT TdF of David Sydorick. This car might have won more concours than any other Ferrari and even 15 years after being featured on the Cover of the Magazine the two-tone dark blue-white coupe still looks immaculate and therefore was a well-deserved winner on its return to the Breakers. This car will be represent the Cavallino Classic next year in the Best of the Best competition and it will certainly be a strong contender.

Tomorrow will see the final day with the multi-marque concours in President Trumps exclusive Beach Club at Mar-a-Lago. In collaboration with Mercedes-Benz this will feature a number of cars with the three-pointed star among others culminating in the award lunch in the golden ballroom.

Report & Images ... Peter Singhof
www.ClassicCarPhotography.de