Not Your Neighborhood Concours
The Greenwich Concours D’Elegance is a must-attend for any car enthusiast, and I’m not just saying that because it’s one of my favorite shows and I’ve been attending for years. Between the three days of show – including an American Day and an International Day, the auction, the Tour Parade, and the stunning location of the event, there is something for everyone to enjoy. Modern, classic, race car, microcar, the Greenwich Concours brings together the rare, wild, and wonderful in a fantastic weekend of automotive history, prestige, and beauty.
This show, in its 20th year, is not just an example of a wonderful automotive event. It also stands out as one of the most well-organized, well-run, and enjoyable Concours D’Elegance shows I’ve attended. While many showrunners strive for the sensation of class, style, and upscale automotive history, The Greenwich Concours delivers in spades, due to the passion and energy of the Wennerstrom family and their wonderful, automotive community at large.
“It started as a passion of my father’s, it wasn’t just a money-making scheme,” says Kirk Wennerstrom, current show organizer and son of founder, Bruce Wennerstrom. “It was something he truly enjoyed…. a wonderful coalescence of all the friends and business partners that all came together at a very fun event.”
It is very much a fun event. This year, the Bonhams auction house has been moved, affording visitors a brilliant view of the open harbor, with ships bobbing in the water against a grey-blue sky. Circles of cars fill the center of the lawn, and the event is trimmed upon all sides by high-class vendors, car manufactures, wine sellers, and modern supercar displays. While the Concours is both intended to, and successful at, reaching a standard of automotive panache and luxury, even the most rough and tumble car enthusiast will find themselves drawn to something – the roar of a 1960s Ferrari starting up, the twin, dazzling smiles of two classic Jaguars waiting for auction, an Edsel, an Amphicar, a Messerschmitt. If you have a love for car history, styling, or speed, you will find yourself overwhelmed and delighted by the display at this event.
Even the torrential downpour didn’t drench the spirits of show attendees. While the awards parade had to be called off, a usually dazzling event of supercars and sports cars of historical prestige, the auction house was abuzz with excitement, and stunning classics sparkled in droplets of rain, sliding over the curves of Italian and German elegance, as if they were designed to glow in nature’s frame.
The Greenwich Concours D’Elegance is a chance to see and experience cars and history that we so rarely enjoy. Each of these individual vehicles on their own would be a marvel, but here one finds themselves walking past Testarossas and Porsche racecars without a second thought. Beauty, rarity, and history reign supreme, and it is truly a wonder to behold, against a background of luxury and the current of an unfailing passion for the automobile.
Because truly, this event, created and produced by the Wennerstrom family, supported and made possible by the contribution of so many car enthusiasts, racers, and historians, is a love letter to car history. It is a promise to the years of the automobile past that we will never forget how it changed the world, and how it changed each of our individual worlds as well.
“The smell of the cars, the noises when they go into gear, you just can’t get that in a museum or magazine,” Wennerstrom says. “You can only get it at an event like this.” In this case, they are not the promotional words of a showrunner who has put his all into an event. They are the truth. The Greenwich Concours is history, beauty, and speed come to life. It is watching the years of the automotive world turn before your eyes. It is the coming together of so many enthusiasts, and so many slices of automotive prestige. It is a right of passage for anyone who has ever called themselves a car lover.
Check out the full photo gallery from the event HERE!