As any serious golfer will tell you, the Pebble Beach Golf Links in California is among the most exclusive (and expensive) places you could swing your Callaway. But for just one Sunday in August each year, the golf karts on the famed eighteenth fairway give way to vehicles a lot less utilitarian and a whole lot more glamorous. On that one Sunday, the idyllic seaside golf course plays host to the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, arguably the best known and most anticipated event in the global vintage and antique car circuit.
My Pebble Beach experience actually started a day before the Concours at the Laguna Seca race track, where we were witness to some hotly contested classic car races. Camped by the wildly tricky Corkscrew corner, it was quite a sight to see a full pack of growling (and not hissing) Shelby Cobras go wheel to wheel with each other. Incidentally, AC and Shelby were among the featured brands at the 2012 Concours as a mark of respect to Carroll Shelby, who passed on earlier this year, and also to commemorate 50 years of the Shelby Cobra. The same night I also managed to see the final bidding session at the world-famous RM Auctions, where a 1962 Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Spyder fetched 8.5 million dollars! I couldn’t recall feeling that small ever.
That was until the next day because nothing, just about nothing, could have prepared me for the sheer scale and grandeur of the actual Concours. Word on the greens was this year’s event had over 200 million dollars of machines! That’s the GDP of some small countries, I’m told. With so much to see and the sky looking more overcast Mumbai than sunny California, time was of the essence. But where to start? There were, after all, 28 categories of vehicles (including one for German motorcycles) and over 200 exhibits. Armed with my Canon, I first made my way to the ‘Antique: Small Horsepower’ section, where my eyes immediately locked on to a bright-red Franklin Open Four Seater from 1904. This particular car was known for its durability and its greatest selling point was that it never overheated despite having an air-cooled engine. Another long-distance machine of the time was the 1903 Packard Model F that was standing close by. It was capable of carrying fuel for 250 miles, oil for two days and water for four weeks!
