The Concept Lawn at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is like the smallest, most expensive auto show you can imagine. So rather than roar down Highway 1 to Big Sur and back, with a hillclimb over Laureles Grade between Highway 68 and Carmel Valley Road, the route this year stuck to more pedestrian streets.
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For the first time, a Lancia took home the Best in Show title at the 2016 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance this past weekend, inarguably the most prestigious award in the concours world. First off, in order to win best of show, a auto must take first in its class.
With nowhere to really open the butterfly valves in the velocity stacks and blow out the carbon, race cars were far less in abundance this year, since they typically need speed to get enough air into their radiators to keep from overheating.
Among the six prize-winning cars competing for the Best of the Best Award were a 1903 Mercedes 60HP Simplex, one of the world’s first luxury cars; a 1965 Ferrari 166 P / 206 SP Dino; and a 1968 Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 Stradale. Each class has a victor, and the class judges decide based on authenticity. Eventually it was sold to rock star Eric Clapton and finally it was put on display in the Pininfarina museum. This year’s crop was a particularly good one.
This time, the show is going great and all the participants are showing off their exceptional craze for their cars and entrants are making the weather more hot with their incredible and un-exceptional cars. The Pebble Beach victor was equipped with a power top, curved side windows, engraved body-side trim. Inside you’ll find a basket-woven interior with wood-grained instruments featuring non-metric gauges.
The 1938 Delahaye 165 was best of class in the featured Delahaye Prewar category and was a former Paris Auto Salon vehicle built on a Type 145 racing chassis and powered by a V12 engine.
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Now showered with love, adoration, and a many bits of yellow paper, the Astura beat out other notable nominees like a 1931 Stutz DV-32 LeBaron Convertible Victoria and a 1938 Delahaye 165 Figoni & Falaschi Cabriolet.
