Carmel, 17th of August, 2017

Today was the big day when a good amount of cars from Sunday’s concours had their first outing lining up early in the morning in front of the Gooding tent for the start of this year’s Tour D´Elegance. After the last year’s edition with the altered route due to the fires in the Monterey Mountains the tour was back to normal with the turning point in Big Sur.

Behind the Mercedes-Benz from the sponsor it became very clear what the featured marques are this year as already the turnout of Ferrari at the Tour was staggering. The firsts to arrive in the morning was Paul Russell with his recent restoration, the sensational 335 S brought back into its original colour standing next to one of his older restorations, the MM winning 166 MM Berlinetta also in blue. Unlike many other cars on the tour the Ferraris did not only look good but also made it all the way to the turning point, the lunch stop and back into the Pebble Beach grounds. Further highlights are the special bodied Boanos and Superamerica from the late Robert Lee Collection as well as the freshly restored 412P brought by Ferrari Classiche for Harry Yaeggy. It will be interesting to see how the Ferrari restoration competes with the Russell restoration in the Ferrari Competition class.

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Other featured classes are the Isotta Fraschini with several classes bringing a big contrast to the racy Ferrari.

While the cars drove back to Carmel for the lunch stop it was enough time to drive back to the RM Sotheby´s preview to look at the remaining cars outside of the tents and the inside of the hotel. One might expect that these cars are the less expensive ones but a Bugatti T35, the 250 GT Coupe and a 250 Europa certainly proved wrong showing how high the standard of the auction cars is this year. After the lunch the cars came back into the Pebble Beach gate at Carmel to be stowed away in the tent for the international entrants or the transporters on the parking lot to be cleaned and prepared for Sunday.

After the tour it was enough time to visit the third of the big auctions, the Bonhams Sale at the Quail Lodge that will be held tomorrow during the Quail Motorsports Gathering. Just like the other two auctions Bonhams has a very interesting selection of cars ranging from the American Corvettes, a great selection of Rally cars to the interesting European Pre-war cars outside the entering tents. Inside the tent where the highlights of the sale including another Jaguar E-Type just as during the Arizona Auction when the they sold the last one as well as a great Maserati 300 S. The undisputed star of the auction will be the McLaren F1. In recent years these cars developed into the modern equivalent of the Ferrari 250 GTO getting insane prices in private treaty sales. Rarely does one come to the market and this might be the chance for a new dot-com millionaire to get into the prestigious F1-owners club holding its rallies just like the mentioned GTO owners. Tomorrow we will see how the market will take all these high valued cars as Bonhams starts with their daytime auction before RM and for the first time Gooding will take over. For all those more interested in food and socialising the Quail Lodge Motor Gathering will be the place to be when a great selection of cars will be surrounded by the food tents.



Report & images … Peter Singhof
www.ClassicCarPhotography.de