Meadow Brook Concours D'Elegance This Weekend

MEADOW BROOK CONCOURS D’ELEGANCE
30th Year of Elegance
By Steve Purdy
TheAutoChannel.com
Detroit Bureau

This is the weekend to immerse yourself in a beautiful meadow full of the most rare, interesting, important and historic automobiles, race cars and motorcycles in the world, right here in the northern Detroit suburb of Rochester Hills. The 30th Meadow Brook Concours d’Elegance will be spread out across the verdant rolling grounds of the Meadow Brook Hall mansion and the 17th and 18th fairways of the Oakland University golf course.

One of the most prestigious shows of its kind, Meadow Brook draws fantastic rolling art from all over the world. Each year the committee, composed of the most knowledgeable and dedicated lovers of collector cars anywhere, determine a series of featured marques and special classes then recruit cars that exemplify each. We expect one of the best shows ever on Saturday August 2nd in the shadow of the mansion.

This year’s features are:

A class called “The Best of Detroit” will explore the finest Detroit designs from the 1920s to the 1960s – a assemblage of about 80 cars. This will be the first year that Meadow Brook has not enjoyed the financial support of the Detroit Three auto makers, and rather than just ignore them for lack of support Larry Moss and his talented team of recruiters have gone the long mile in assembling some of the finest examples of Detroit iron.

For the first time there will be a featured class of drag racing cars of the 1960s. Meadow Brook was one of the first classic car shows to feature racing cars and this drag racing class is one of the first of its kind as well. At the short-lead press conference on the front lawn of the mansion we heard a raucous explosion and roar from the garages. I thought it was some catastrophe in motion but it was just two drag racing cars bursting to life – a cool 1937 Willys Virgil Cates race car and a wild 1969 Mancici racer.

A special display will have Rolls Royce Phantoms from each of the Phantom series to represent that world renowned marque.

We’ll drool over a class of Packard V12 automobiles.

There will be a collection of British twin motorcycles.

I can’t wait to see what will constitute the class called “Swoopy Coupes.”

The McLaren racing engine folks, will celebrate their 40th anniversary being honored with a special class including many of their most notable fast cars including the Indy 500 race car the Johnny Rutherford drove to the 1974 win.

The traditional American and European luxury cars, like Duesenburg, Delage, Isotta Frachini, Talbot Lago and many more, have been a mainstay at Meadow Brook and will impress us again.

Certainly, one of the most significant years for American styling with exaggerated fins and chrome was 1959 and a full class of ’59 convertibles will be on display, including the soft and lovely, creamy-white T-Bird Larry Seyfarth bought brand new for his wife to honor their 1st anniversary. She still drives it regularly and Larry is bringing it to Meadow Brook.

Other specially featured cars are guaranteed to impress: a 1954 Fiat 8V Supersonic, a ’34 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 one-off boattail, never before seen in the US, and a ’34 Rolls Royce Phantom II.

I’ll be there early and I’ll be there until late in the day. But I still won’t be able to adequately appreciate all the magnificent vehicles on display. After at least 25 years of attending the show myself, I haven’t given up trying.

Hope I’ll see you there.