Celebrating its 29th year, the annual Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance, now known simply as the Amelia, shrugged off a few downpours to once again celebrate automotive art spanning numerous eras. Over the now four-day event, more than 27,000 enthusiasts—up from 25,000 in 2023—turned up to raise a paddle at the Gooding & Company and Broad Arrow collector-car auctions, see a Saturday Cars & Community gathering of over 500 cars, celebrate motorsport legend Rick Hendrick, and gaze at more than 270 world-class automobiles at Sunday’s concours on the soggy fairways of the Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island.
“Twenty-nine years of Amelia and it continues to flourish, and continues as the concours in Florida and the East Coast,” says McKeel Hagerty, chairman of both the Amelia and the company that now owns it, Hagerty insurance, in a conversation with Robb Report. “And it once again proved itself; the fans came out, the cars came out, and it all worked. Yes we had rain, but it didn’t do anything to dampen spirits.” Here are what we considered the 10 most compelling cars on the show lawn.
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1918 Broadmoor Special “Yellow Devil”
Image Credit: Howard Walker In 1918, entrepreneur and philanthropist Spencer Penrose, owner of the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, Colo., and the man who built the Pikes Peak hill-climb competition, wanted a race car to showcase his new 12.4-mile mountain track. So he took one of the hotel’s 21 Pierce Arrow four-seaters and created this wild race car he christened the “Yellow Devil.”
Penrose went on to compete in the Pikes Peak “Race to the Clouds” no fewer than seven times. “I have no idea how he did it. This thing is as scary as hell at 45 mph, let alone 95 mph,” says Fred Veitch, chairman of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb and the Broadmoor’s special caretaker. He explains that the car disappeared in the early 1930s, then was found on a Kansas farm in 1989, and subsequently fully restored. It was part of a display of Pikes Peak racers at this year’s Amelia concours.
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1931 Bugatti Type 51
Image Credit: Howard Walker “This thing is more fun than a canoe with wheels,” says Mitch Gross, owner of this fearsome 1931 Bugatti Type 51 racer. “I’ve had to have elbow pads sewn into my race suit to stop me getting burned from the tires when I turn into corners.” In its long racing career, this Bugatti has competed throughout Europe, including Sicily’s famous Targa Florio.
Before Gross bought it in 2007, it had been part of the J. B. Nethercutt Collection in Sylmar, Calif., and the Dr. Peter Williamson Collection in Dartmouth, Conn. Originally a Type 35, it was converted to a Type 51 to compete in the Targa Florio road race. Powered by a supercharged straight-eight producing just 161 hp, the car’s weight—it tips the scales at just 1,700 pounds—gives the car its remarkable performance. Says Gross, “We still race it as often as we can, but we also drive it to get ice cream.”
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1949 Timbs Special
Image Credit: Howard Walker One of the casualties of the Woolsey Fire that ravaged Southern California’s Malibu community in 2018 was Gary Cerveny’s 1949 Norman Timbs Streamliner Special—that, along with 76 other classics in his collection that were housed in his 21,000 square-foot home. The car was burned to a crisp after Cerveny had painstakingly restored the 17-foot-long two-seater to concours condition.
“Thankfully we had digitally recreated the body on computer just before the fire, so with the help of restorer John Bothwell in Costa Mesa, Calif., we recreated it. The aluminum body alone took two years to build,” explains Cerveny. After the originally restored car was shown at Amelia in 2010, it was back at this year’s event, looking better than ever. Inspired by Auto Union streamliners from the 1930s, the car was from the creative mind of Indy race-car engineer Norman E. Timbs.
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1954 Chrysler Ghia GS-1
Image Credit: Howard Walker “Think of it as an American in an Italian suit,” says Andy Reid, collections manager at the Maine Classic Car Museum, which owns this gorgeous 1954 Chrysler Ghia GS-1 coupe. Much-loved by Hollywood celebs back in the Fifties, the model mates flowing bodywork by the Italian studio Ghia, with the chassis and Hemi V-8 engine from a Chrysler New Yorker sedan.
This example, painted a stunning Nassau Green, is one of just nine built and one of only six still on the road. Restored in 1995, the car has won its class at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in 1995, 2005, and 2022. “It’s got 97,000 miles on the clock, starts at the first turn of the key, and still drives like a dream,” says Reid.
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1955 Ferrari 250 Europa GT
Image Credit: Howard Walker We weren’t the only ones to fall in love with Kim and Stephen Bruno’s exquisite 1955 Ferrari 250 GT Europa coupe. A panel of 20 young judges—between 10 to 15 years of age—gave it the coveted Hagerty Kids’ Award. This was the 1955 Paris Salon show car, designed by Pininfarina with a coupe body by Scaglietti.
The Florida-based collectors bought the car 12 years ago and recently gave it a full restoration with Boca Raton–based Rare Classics Restorations. Part of it included changing the blue paint back to the original Grigio Max Meyer gray. “The original Englebert tires are no longer available, so we created brand-new ones, using Michelin shells and molding new Englebert lettering which we glued on. That’s the level of detail,” says Stephen.
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1955 Victress S4
Image Credit: Howard Walker Back in the early 1950s, you could buy a Victress fiberglass body from the Hellings Company in North Hollywood, Calif., for just $595. Mount it on a cheap 1939 Ford chassis, power it with a junkyard Studebaker V-8 engine, and you’d have a rapid two-seat sports car to rival any Jaguar XK120. Don August bought his dilapidated 1955 Victress S4 in 2020, fresh out of 30 years of storage in a Wisconsin barn.
“I saw it in an ad and thought it looked amazing. It was something I’d never seen before, or even heard of,” he tells us. But instead of simply restoring it, he decided to turn it into a restomod, with a modified body, a custom interior, a 430 hp GM 383 V-8 crate motor, and a unique front grille. Says August, “We finished it just a couple of weeks ago, just in time for the Amelia.”
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1973 Citroën DS21 Décapotable by Chapron
Image Credit: Howard Walker In our opinion, droptop convertibles do not come any cooler than this midnight-blue 1973 Citroën DS—bodied by renowned Paris coachbuilder Henri Chapron—owned by Miami collector Volker Ribniger. “You can imagine the reaction it gets cruising along Miami’s South Beach. People turn away from Lamborghinis to see it,” says Ribniger, while he shows off the complex hydro-pneumatic suspension that levitates the car high off the ground.
“It’s just like riding on air; the car just floats down the road,” says Ribniger. After buying the vehicle in France in 2022, Ribniger sent it to top Chapron restorer Citroën DS Manufaktur in Germany for a full, nut-and-bolt restoration to concours condition. The vehicle’s ahead-of-its-time technology was recognized with it winning the Amelia’s “Engineering Excellence Award,” presented by BMW.
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2010 Ruf CTR3 Clubsport
Image Credit: Howard Walker There are Ruf Porsches, and then there are Ruf Porsches. And this mid-engined, rare-as-hens’-teeth CTR3 Clubsport is as exclusive as they get. Based loosely on a mid-engined Porsche Cayman, it came with a Ruf-designed body inspired by vintage Le Mans racers from the 1960s. “This example is the fabled, one-of-one Formula Unique version with PTS Matte Silver paint,” explains Marc-André Pfeifer, head of sales at Ruf.
Powering the rocket ship is an uprated 766 hp twin-turbo flat-six mated to a seven-speed PDK dual-clutch transmission. It’s a power-train configuration that can take the car to a top speed of 236 mph. The vehicle’s original price was around $500,000. At the Amelia, the CTR3 was one of 14 examples of Ruf’s work, which included the famous 1987 CTR “Yellowbird,” once the fastest road car in the world.
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1962 Ferrari 250 GTO
Image Credit: Howard Walker The custom-made WeatherTech floor mats give a clue as to the passionate owner of this spectacular racing Ferrari 250 GTO. Back in 2018, WeatherTech founder and CEO David MacNeil spent a reported $70 million snapping-up this silver GTO in a private auction. At the Amelia, it was voted “Best in Show: Concours de Sport,” adding to the car’s multitude of trophies.
“I’d like to thank the wonderful surgeons at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., for giving me a new ankle at the end of last year. Now I can finally depress the clutch and shift the GTO’s gears without pain,” says MacNeil. Among the car’s racing achievements was a fourth overall in the 1963 24 Hours of Le Mans, and outright victory in the 1964 Tour de France race.
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1947 Delahaye 135MS Narwal Cabriolet
Image Credit: Howard Walker A worthy winner of the Amelia’s “Best in Show: Concours d’ Elegance” award, this outrageously styled 1947 Delahaye is the pride and joy of automotive-auction guru Dana Mecum. “We just got it back from its third full restoration in 10 years, and this time, I reckon we got it right,” he tells Robb Report.
A star of the 1947 Paris Auto Salon, the car was built for the singer Charles Trenet, known as the “Sinatra of France.” It was one of six Narwhal cabriolets, named for the model’s strange nose bump on the hood that’s reminiscent of a narwhal’s snout. Power comes from a 3.5-liter six-cylinder engine packing 130 hp. As for that glorious paintwork, the color is called Orange Brulé.
