The headline event of Monterey Car Week, the Pebble Beach Concours dʼElegance, awarded Best in Show to the 1937 Mercedes 540K of Jim Patterson on 20 August. It makes the car the 10th Mercedes-Benz to win the Californian show – a record number, with the Stuttgart marque having previously tied with Bugatti.
First owned by the then Shah of Afghanistan, Mohammad Zahir, the car has recently been rebuilt by its current keeper, a collector from Kentucky who has won Pebble twice before with different cars. “I was impressed by the time and thought invested in this restoration,” said concours chair Sandra Button. “Every piece of this beautiful Mercedes-Benz was researched so carefully to honour its history.” Bought by Patterson in 2022, the car was restored with the support of Mercedes-Benz Heritage as one of just three surviving examples of this particular Spezial Roadster body.
Other close contenders included a 1930 Mercedes-Benz 710SS Spezial Roadster, ʼ32 Alfa Romeo 8C-2300 Corto Figoni Cabriolet and a ʼ39 Delahaye 165 Figoni et Falaschi Cabriolet – the latter two entered by the familiar names of Gregor Fisken and Peter Mullen.
A total of 217 cars competed in 27 concours classes, with winners ranging in age from a 1910 Stearns 30/60 Touring (Antique) to a 1968 Lamborghini Miura P400 (Lamborghini 60th Anniversary). Four elegance awards and 20 special trophies were also handed out independent of the classes. Featured groups this year included two celebrating the work of Giuseppe Figoni on the centenary of his first car, plus single-marque categories for the 60th anniversary of McLaren and a celebration of Porsche on its 75th. The latter was won by the 1963 Porsche 901 prototype ʻQuickblauʼ Karmann/ Reutter coupé owned by famed tuner Alois Ruf.
An American flavour was maintained by the regular Packard and Duesenberg classes, while the new American Dream Cars of the 1950s set included slightly more recent local metal, including the 1953 Kurtis Sorrell SR-100 Roadster that won the class.
Superfast races to Quail victory
A 1956 Ferrari 410 Superamerica ʻSuperfastʼ landed the Best of Show trophy at The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering, on 18 August. More than 200 machines were on display at the exclusive hotel and golf club in the chic surroundings of Carmel.
Anne Brockinton Leeʼs winning Ferrari (left) was fresh from a multiyear restoration, sporting dramatic one-off Pinin Farina prototype coachwork, and is the only 410 Superamerica to have been fitted with a twin-spark ver
