A 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO race car, left, owned by David MacNeil won Best of Show-Concours de Sport. Dana Mecum's 1947 Delahaye 135MS Narval Cabriolet earned Best of Show-Concours d'Elegance. | Dan Scanlan, WJCT News 89.9
Published on March 4, 2024 at 10:50 am
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The rains came, and the rains went as crowds stayed around Sunday for the 29th iteration of The Amelia concours d’elegance in and around the Ritz-Carlton, Amelia Island.
When the judges had spoken, a rare Ferrari race car owned by David MacNeil of Fort Lauderdale had won Best of Show-Concours de Sport, and Dana Mecum’s curvaceous 1947 Delahaye 135MS Narval Cabriolet earned Best of Show-Concours d’Elegance.
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For MacNeil, who made sure the Ferrari looked exactly like it did when it raced in the 1963 24 Hours of Le Mans, the win was very sweet.
“Getting a Best of Show at one of the most important concours in the world is an epic event,” he said. “It is award you can’t buy — you have to work hard and you have to be dedicated to the collecting of cars and try to do the best you can and hope for the best.”
For Mecum, who owns the major automobile auction house of the same name, the sleek metallic brown car coachbuilt by Figoni et Falaschi is one of only seven made, and the star of the 1947 Paris Auto Salon.
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“I feel great,” the man said from Geneva Lakes, Wisconsin, said. “This is the third restoration of this car in my care, and we got it wrong the first two times. We didn’t have the right interior; we didn’t have the right color. It was a long journey, but its worth it.”
Walking the field just before a thunderstorm rumbled through Amelia Island, McKeel Hagerty smiled as he looked at the classics and race cars in the third year of his company’s ownership of the show. This year’s show featured 200-plus classics as well as an eclectic mix of newer Japanese performance cars, Italian motorcycles and some serious French and Italian racing machinery.
“This is what Amelia is all about. Right here, it’s a beautiful spot with incredible cars,” Hagerty said. “We have to keep the best of the best from every generation of cars here. But that means you have to keep adding some newer vehicles each and every year. Having a motorsport honoree here like Rick Hendrick is just a dream come true because he has so many cars in his history, and so many of them are here.”
For Hendrick, a NASCAR race team owner whose cars placed first and second at the recent Daytona 500, being the honoree at the largest and longest-running classic car concours d’elegance in the region is “humbling.” He was pleased the collection of his cars on display, including the 1931 Chevrolet stock car he built with his father.
“It means that they have selected you because of your heritage in racing or whatever you have done in the auto industry,” he said. “It’s been a love affair for me, and to have my guys here to celebrate it like Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon and Terry Labonte and Kenny Schrader made it more fun. And Ricky Rudd was in the audience. It’s been a really neat experience.”
Known as the racers concours, it was founded in 1996 by Bill Warner, a Jacksonville businessman, car collector and magazine photographer. The automotive charity event is always held the first weekend of March at The Ritz-Carlton, Amelia Island, and the 10th and 18th fairways of the Golf Club of Amelia Island. Warner remains chairman emeritus after Hagerty acquired the concours’ rights in mid-2021.
The event continues to annually honor a famous racer and his cars, from Stirling Moss and Richard Petty to Roger Penske and last year’s honoree, multiple NASCAR champ Jeff Gordon, plus showcasing classic marques, antiques and muscle cars to crowds numbering more than 25,000. Along with the Sunday concours, there was an auction Saturday inside the hotel and a packed Cars and Caffeine cruise-in outside.
Lined up with some special Porsche rally cars was Warner’s own 1971 Porsche 911T, which he bought new, then competed in the 1975 Cannonball Run — a cross-country speed rally — with co-driver Tom Nehl, also of Jacksonville. It is not stock — modifications also include a ducktail spoiler bought from a local race car driver and wheels from late Brumos Racing champion Peter Gregg.
“The engine is a 2.7 Carrera. The purists would get all bent out of shape. I don’t care; it’s my car,” Warner said. “We came in 14th. Tom Nehl. Kept falling asleep, so I drove nearly the whole 41 hours.”
Like a Phoenix arisen from the ashes, literally, Gary Cerveny’s 1948 Timbs Special made its world premiere after a full rebuild from a devastating 2018 California wildfire that reduced it to a frame and melted aluminum skin. With the body redesigned on computer by Lucy Bothwell, the sleek custom streamliner with straight-8 Buick engine behind the tight cockpit glistened in the sun.
The car gathered crowds when it first appeared at the Amelia in 2013 and did so again on Sunday.
“It was an extremely easy decision to restore it. There were 76 cars and motorcycles that burned up in the fire,” Cerveny said. “This is the only car that we said, absolutely, we will rebuild. We got a 250-foot construction crane out there, and it was in the middle of a 12,000-foot garage. We craned it out.”
Sitting silver among all the red Ferrari 250 race cars was MacNeil’s 1962 250 GTO, with some serious competition history.
“It won the 10 days of Tour de France, which is a grueling test. And when it got done, it also took second place at the 24 Hours of Le Mans,” he said. “And after the race was over with, they drove it on the street to Paris, parked it in front of a bar and went in drinking.”
Alan Rosenblum brought his 1927 Bugatti Type 37A Grand Prix Racer from Utica, New York Braving the rain in the open car during the Friday road tour, then more on the grass on Sunday, it is done in historic Molsheim blue, one of a number of classic Bugatti race and touring cars there to celebrate the French marque’s 100th anniversary.
“Of all my cars, this is the most fun to drive,” he said, “You feel like you’re part of the car. You’re sitting almost on the transmission, and when you take those corners, it pulls you through the corners. … And the sound, of course, is very unique with no muffler on these cars. There’s a lot of history with Bugatti.”
Not every classic care on display was a gas-burner. Jack Beatty’s entry was a 1916 Detroit Electric, its batteries good for 80 miles of range, a top speed of 22 mph and a tiller to steer with. It won Best in Class/Electric.
“Back in the day, ladies loved these cars because they were so clean and quiet,” he said. “Detroit also made a smaller B body, a foot shorter than his, and a lot of people called it a doctor’s coupe.”
For Peter Brock, who designed the Cobra Daytona race cars and co-designed of the 1963 Corvette, his 29 years of judging have shown him how Warner’s original design grew under him and has continued to thrive under Hagerty’s care.
“I know it will continue to get better, and it will continue in the memory of Bill Warner and all he has done,” he said. “We will always honor him for that. I love the show. I love coming here and the time that I have been here and seeing the changes that have gone on, I don’t think there’s a show in the country as eclectic as this.”
The event’s economic impact is estimated at close to $30 million-plus a year, filling hotel rooms from Jacksonville to Camden County, Georgia. The event also has generated more than $4 million in donations to Community Hospice & Palliative Care, Spina Bifida of Jacksonville and Shop with Cops.
