An airy, relaxed, and fun weekend of car-related events at the 2019 Concours d’Elegance of America.

Often it is the big name Concours events that draw a ton of attention and media, but as with any event of scale in the car world, there come negatives as well. With the rise of popularity in classic cars these days, events like the “Pebble Beach Concours” have become more about wading through crowds of people rather than enjoying beautiful cars in an idyllic setting. This is where events like The Concours d’Elegance of America shine.

Spread out over the lush rolling fairways of, The Inn at Saint John’s, The Concours d’Elegance of America offers event-goers an airy and fun atmosphere with a truly outstanding and varied selection of cars showing up year after year. We here at LBI Limited have been both attending and sponsoring this event for the past four years and its easily one of our favorite events on the calendar. Although the Concours on Sunday is the can’t miss event, this weekend has grown into an all-out celebration of all things automotive with around 15 different events starting on Friday and running through Sunday. One of these “can’t miss” events is the ever-expanding Cars & Coffee hosted by yours truly here at LBI Limited.

This year’s Cars and Coffee event on Saturday morning saw a massive turnout with an awe-inspiring variety of cars pouring in through the gates as early as an hour before the start of the event. We helped to get this event off the ground four years ago and are very proud of the growing turnout every year. With cars ranging from a 2005 Porsche Carrera GTs to pre-war Rolls Royces, there was something for everyone to enjoy. We had several cars from our inventory on display including the 1972 Ferrari Daytona, the 1967 Ferrari 330 GTC, 1965 Apollo 3500 GT, as well as a few others. This event is always the perfect time to catch up with friends, meet some new people, and enjoy some impressive cars in a no-pressure, relaxed environment. Our favorite way to do car events! Check out the gallery below to see our booth as well as some of our favorite cars that turned out.

As Sunday rolled around, the Concours gates opened with people pouring in to enjoy the beautiful weather and clear skies overhead. We set up our display booth right as people entered the show field and had a number of great current offerings on display as well as our usual lounge setup with free water for everyone to stay hydrated. We met a ton of amazing people and had some fantastic discussions about cars. Down on the show field, however, hundreds of amazing automobiles were lined up for peoples viewing pleasure. This year’s featured classes included Ferrari Le Mans winners, Formula 1 cars, Woodie Cars, Bentleys, as well as almost 20 other classes ranging from Gas Light era cars all the way through modern supercars.

One of our favorite parts of the Concours is choosing the winner of the award that we were instrumental in incorporating: The Next Generation Car Guy award. This award is meant to be a celebration of cars that you do not typically see on a Concours field. Past award winners have included a Lancia Delta Integrale, an Audi Quattro (think group B rally car), and a Toyota Supra. Determining this year’s winner was tough as the field of modern collectibles keeps growing but the more we laid eyes on the wildly aggressive White lines of the 1992 Vector W8 we knew it had to take home the prize. This fantastic example is one of just 22 produced. It has under 1000 miles from new, and still sits on its original and bespoke Michelin XGT Plus tires! Needless to say, we need to get behind the wheel of one of these someday soon and give the 6.0-liter twin-turbocharged V8 a quick run through the gears!

In addition to presenting the Next Generation Car Guy Award, we also had the pleasure of presenting two cars on the show field this year; a 1909 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost Roi Des Belges and a 1915 Oakland Model 37 Speedster. Both cars are extraordinary and rare examples that we have had the pleasure of acquiring for a good client who was kind enough to let us share them with the masses during the Concours. The 1909 Silver Ghost was a real crowd-pleaser with its polished bonnet and iconic serpent-shaped horn that at the end of the day took home the award for best in class for the Rolls-Royce division. Driving a vehicle that’s now over 110 years old across the show stand and receiving the award is undoubtedly an experience we will not soon forget!

This year’s Concours d’Elegance of America was yet another great success. We met many awesome new people, hung out with old friends and hopefully excited people about next years event. If you haven’t had the chance to make it out to Michigan for this event weekend, we highly recommend putting it on the calendar as this show is easily up there with the best of them! Next up, see you in Monterey for Car Week 2019!