The Amelia Island Concours By John Lamm

What hath Warner wrought

Amelia Island is just north of Jacksonville, Florida and come each March Bill Warner turns Amelia’s Ritz Carlton hotel and its grounds into an automotive playground. There are displays, seminars, auctions, shops and wall-to-wall people enjoying it all. A huge cars and coffee covers much of the field on Saturday morning and first thing Sunday morning the concours begins.

One thing that makes Amelia unique is the variety of automobiles. Classic cars, race machines, a Duesenberg here, a Lancia rally car there, BMWs from the museum in Munich, an L-29 Cord to your right and a Richard Petty NASCAR stocker to the left. But let us show you some of that variety.

Hans Stuck was the honored driver at this year’s Amelia Island Concours. To highlight his career, Porsche brought the 1987 962C in which Stuck, Derek Bell and Al Holbert won the 24 Hours of Le Mans. In the background is one of Stuck’s Grand Prix rides, a 1977 Brabham BT 45B from Alfa Romeo’s museum in Arese, Italy.
Originally Hans Stuck wanted to be a priest, but he ended up successfully racing cars in Formula 1, the World Sports car Championship, IMSA, the SCCA’s Trans-Am...the list goes on.
Amelia Island mixes the old and the new, so a prospective customer could test driver a new car, like the Lamborghini Huracan in the background, and then get a look at its “grandfather,” the famed Miura.
Peter Brock penned the Cobra Daytona Coupe and the Corvette Sting Ray race car, but also shaped this slick Can-Am racer. And who assigned him to do it? A pair of legends, Carroll Shelby and Alessandro DeTomaso.
In an impressive display, Amelia matched winning race cars with the trophies they earned. This is the 1965 Le Mans-winning Ferrari 250 LM--which now resides in the Indy museum--with the trophy it won. Car owner Luigi Chinetti took that hardware home to accompany the trophy he also won for driving to a Le Mans win in 1949--a cup also on display--and that his wife used as a flower pot. In the background is Revs’ Sebring-winning O.S.C.A.
Janis Joplin may have asked, “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz,” but she bought this 1964 Porsche 356 C 1600 Cabriolet. The car recently sold at auction for $1.76 million.
Bill Warner isn’t afraid to have the big iron at his concours, like this super speedway-winning, tall-tail Richard Petty 1970 Plymouth Road Runner Superbird.
When Ford first began to develop the GT40, it built several prototypes, none of which exist today. Thankfully, this replica has been created to give us a look at the first years of that legendary race program.
Come on now, you gotta love this concept car, the 1951 Manta Ray. Based on a Studebaker chassis, it reflects the early 1950s thinking that cars should look like jet aircraft. It’s no surprise it was created in California by a pair of aeronautical engineers.
And we can’t resist showing the dashboard of the Manta Ray. How is this for driver distraction?
Giotto Bizzarrini’s career had included Alfa Romeo, Ferrari and Iso when he branched off to build his own cars. Thanks to Chevy V-8s, Bizzarrini coupes were both fast and beautiful, but he had Stile Italia design a special model. Three were made and this is the prototype, called a 5300 Spyder S.I.
Many of the automobiles in the Revs Collier Collection were once owned by Briggs Cunningham. He also built and raced his own cars, but here is one of the street machines, a 1954 Cunningham C3.
The late John Greenwood was famed for his formidable wide-bodied Corvettes, this one from the 1974 race season.
For all the race cars and fun machines at Amelia, there were also the more traditional classic cars, such as this 1928 Auburn 8-115 Speedster with its Woodlite headlamps.
Revs was honored with the Porsche Trophy for the Collier Collection’s 1969 908 LH, named the most historically significant Porsche at Amelia.
Always a crowd favorite, the 1938 Phantom Corsair, which lives in Reno’s National Automobile Museum.
Trans-Am race cars had a class to note the 50th anniversary of the series. Best in the group was this 1968 Penske Chevrolet Camaro.
Lamborghini showed this Miura, which happens to be the very first SV model and was restored by the company’s Polo Storico in Italy.
There were several cars at Amelia that raced in the 500 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which presents the Tony Hulman award. This year it went to a 1966 Lotus 38 that was raced by Jim Clark
Not long ago, we wrote that the 1949 Ferrari 166 MM that won the 24 Hours of Le Mans that year might be one of the most significant Ferraris of all time. The Amelia judges seemed to agree, and awarded the car the Denise McCluggage Trophy for the most historically significant post-war race car.
Here is a car that has only existed in books for many of us and we finally got to see it at Amelia. It is a 1952 Pegaso Z-102, one of the limited number of V-8 sports cars from that Spanish company. What makes this one stand out is, of course, the bodywork by ENASA. It’s called the Cúpula and would you know where to get red-wall tires?

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