Event Report: Beverly Hills Rodeo Drive Concours

by Wallace Wyss –

The show is called “concours” but I take that as a loose description because nowhere did I see judges dutifully subtracting points for non original items. In fact I’d say this show has more non-originals than any other show called a Concours but that’s the fun of it.

You have to admit that Rodeo Drive (pronounced ROH-DAY-POH) is an outrageous street to begin with, wall to wall with all sorts of famous names in fashion including Ralph Lauren. I didn’t peek in any of the stores because the price range is, oh, ten times my usual, though I am looking for some oh-so-English stringback driving gloves. But it is the street to tell what’s in fashion so to speak.

One of the real charms of the 5 or 6 block stretch running North from Wilshire Blvd is the little alley that suddenly zooms uphill on a cobblestone street with a restaurant and more shops along the way. It makes you feel you feel like suddenly you are in Yurroip, like in the 14th arrondissement in Paris. I wish they would do another such fantasy street further up toward Santa Monica Blvd.

It was Father’s Day so there was a big crowd–so thick by noon I had to leave.

Every kind of car, here’s just a few:

In purebred Ferraris, one that impressed me was a short wheelbase 250GT, and, in a special section reserved for Sothebys, an auction company promoting upcoming events. Sothebys had a Dino prototype for sale. Now this is where I have to praise auctions because they can adequately promote such a car worldwide, and it’s pretty cool to be able to not only buy a Dino but one built on a racing 206GT race car chassis, which they did with a few race cars that didn’t sell. Who knows if that chassis raced? So it’s two cars in one if it did, a race car and a street car.

Then there were the supercars. I admit I haven’t kept up with the latest of the latest but I surmised that a car that said Gordon Murray on it looked like the McLaren M1 because when he was at McLaren he designed the car, which did well at LeMans. I don’t know how he got permission to copy his old car now that he’s left the firm, but he did and it looks good. There was several other marques that I haven’t caught up with, including a two seater where you sit two in a row like a jet fighter.

There was a handful of prewar classics, my all time favorite being the Shah of Iran Bugatti. I know a bit about it because I have painted two portraits of the two seater. It was given to the Shah by some foreign power kissing up to him at the eve of WWII. He had wanted another car with the same styling he’d seen at Paris show but that was sold so whoever was gifting him said “No problem we’ll buy a Bugatti and have it bodied to match.” Years later, after he had dumped his first wife for failing to produce a male heir (key to having a dynasty in Royal lives) it was unceremoniously sold for an alleged $300 so his newer wife wouldn’t have to see the Old Wife’s wedding car.

The Rodeo Drive show rents space to dealers and besides Ferrari having a section of red carpet that held at least five brand new ones, there were two or three other dealers that had cars on display and I ask you, what better place in the US than to display the fastest most expensive cars?

Some of the individually owned cars had no signs as to what they were, so it was kind of like seeing a Van Gogh in a thrift store. Could it be real? Like a red 250GTO and a Mercedes 300SLR coupe? The windows of both of those were blocked off including front windscreen and rear one so I couldn’t see the interiors. which no doubt were unoriginal.

And then there was the hot rod shop owner displaying three cars that would have been collectors items in the old days, like a Mercedes 600 limo, but all were  customized with modern stuff. I figure the market for those is rock stars that, five years ago never heard of these classics but now that their albums are Number One on the charts, they want a classic luxury car but oh, would you mind re-doing the interior with all modern electronics, and adding flared fenders and wider wheels and tires and….the list goes on. Old cars. New Money. Only in Kalifornia.

Then there were the Kalifornia Kustoms. Cars like a ’59 Chevy that had the bewinged trunk lid left open so you could see the impressive plumbing that make the car go up and down like an out of control rodeo horse. That car was about as far as you could go from eligible for Pebble Beach. They would close the Pebble Beach concours before having Chicano-jumping cars doing their thing.

There was also a Ferrari Testarossa roadster. Yes I know Ferrari didn’t make them (except for a couple for high execs) and it had two suitcases on the back, not packed, just sitting there. This reminds you this is not a park setting like San Marino, or a golf course like Pebble Beach but a commercial street and some shop owner was no doubt reminding you that, yes, by coincidence, they sell suitcases.

And then there were rarities that you would have be  a more dyed-in-the-wool connoisseur than yours truly to identify. Here I wrote several  books on Cobras but missed identifying a blue AC called the 200, a one off car that it’s owner explained had been all set for production when ol’ Shelby walks in (or galloped in?) and says “Forget that–I want you to make X number of old Cobras” and well, you gots to do what The Man says so they dropped the 200 with only one built. The body looks Italian but is all British so I now think you still need the Italians for styling  but maybe there was indeed some damn good panel benders in the Olde Sod.

Ironically some dead stock cars stood out because we realize we didn’t appreciate them enough originally like a Morris Minor convertible, like the one in It Takes a Thief  an old Cary Grant-Grace Kelly movie about a cat burglar in Monaco, and a Citroen convertible which the man next to me said you would have to be a hydraulics expert to own since everything is driven by high pressure hoses. It still had grandeur and it was dead stock.

They had several vendor’s vans parked along one side street so you could order a taco and I think that is welcome because not many viewers could afford the $8 per cuppa java they were trying to charge at one restaurant on Rodeo. I did find a Starbucks two blocks East, where a medium coffee was only $4.85.

One of the exotic car displays was selling model cars, metal ones and I thought they were very reasonable (like $20-$45), compared to what you expect on Rodeo Drive. I hope they add a vendor’s village with old books and art work (oh, did I mention I am an artist?) next year because, after all, a lot of the crowd was tourists who wanted a souvenir of Beverly Hills’ most famous street.

One of the joys of this meet is it’s FREE-FREE-FREE for spectators. Parking is even free in Beverly Hills on Sunday.

There was piped in music but also when you went up to that Euro restaurant at the top of the alley overlooking Wilshire there was a live band.

I didn’t really see that many women I would consider would be actresses, hoping  to get discovered, but I saw lots of families because after all it was Father’s Day and they wanted to make the Old Man happy.

Summing up, this is a great event to take a tourist visiting you, one who has mentioned that they want to see examples of the Car Crazy California culture. The concours judges of Pebble can stay home, this is an all fun day…

Let us know what you think in the Comments.

 

THE AUTHOR Wallace Wyss makes oil paintings of classiques, but after this show might still sneak a hot rod portrait into his portfolio.

 

Photos by Wallace Wyss.