Pebble Beach 2017: Elegant ATS 2500 named Best of Show winner at The Quail
The Sunday in Monterey Car Week belongs to Pebble Beach, and its Concours D’Elegance.
But Friday increasingly belongs to Carmel Valley, and its The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering.
And the exclusive all-day affair — where luxury lifestyle manufacturers of everything including fine wines, custom motorboats and aircraft try to impress wealthy car collectors who come to compete for prizes — is gaining in prestige. Many old Pebble Beach hands, some of whom have attended car week for multiple decades, declare that today’s Quail has captured the spirit of yesterday’s Concours.
Several thousand attendees crowded the Quail Golf and Country Club fairways Friday to wander among several hundred custom and classic vehicles.
Manufacturers as disparate as Acura, Alfa Romeo, Rolls-Royce, Lamborghini and Karma pitched new product from stages lining the lawns, while judges studied the competing cars and elegantly attired spectators sought shade while snacking on food prepared by the Peninsula Hotels Group — owners of the Quail facility and managers of the car show.
Prizes were presented in 14 categories. Winner of the top Rolex Circle of Champions Best of Show award was Bruce Milner, for his 1964 ATS 2500 GTS. The coveted Spirit of the Quail award was given to Ann Brockington Lee, for her 1938 Packard Eight Model 1601 Cabriolet.
Other attendees declared themselves winners before the prizes were distributed. Pasadena’s Gary Wales, a veteran participant at Pebble Beach’s various car shows, had come to Carmel Valley with his Prince of Darkness, a wildly imaginative custom take on a vintage 1936 Bentley race car.
Standing beside the vehicle that he calls “a fan tail, boat tail speedster,” Wales said: “If someone walks up to me and smiles, I’m a winner. That’s all I’m here for.”
Beverly Hills’ Bruce Meyer, another veteran Car Week participant and a multiple entrant at the Concours D’Elegance and The Quail, had come north with a 1932 Ford hot rod.
Basking in the balmy sunlight, wearing a straw cowboy hat and western-themed belt and buckle, Meyer said, “This has become one of my favorite car events of the year.”
New York entrepreneur Michael Fux, in what has now become a Quail tradition, was on hand at the Rolls-Royce booth for the unveiling of his tailor-made Dawn convertible. As he has done six times in the past, Fux was on hand to accept delivery of a car the Goodwood, England company had custom colored to his specifications. In this case, the car featured a custom “Fux Fuxia” tone, based on a fuschia flower Fux gave the company when making the order.
Across the lawn, and at the other end of the automotive spectrum, several men armed with cotton rags were putting the final polish on a trio of custom lowrider sedans — two 1960s Impalas and a 1936 Chevrolet Master Deluxe — brought to the Quail to promote the Petersen Automotive Museum’s ongoing lowrider car exhibit.
Nearby, high school pals Joseph Manarello and David Nier were also polishing their baby, a tony 1959 Fiat Autobianchi Transformabile. The San Jose-area pair had bought the little car off a Craigslist ad, Manarello said, and spent “about 5,000 hours” restoring it to concours quality.
Among the other hopefuls was Mike Zaroudny, who had come to The Quail with a stunning 1954 Jaguar Sutton Special. The veteran race car, built on the bones of an XK120 by California builder Jack Sutton, was dressed much as it had in its race days — scuffs, paint chips and all.
Zaroudny said he wasn’t taking a car to Sunday’s Pebble Beach Concours, still the most exalted event of the week of car-centric. Not yet, anyway.
“I’ve attended Pebble Beach 22 years in a row,” Zaroudny said. “But, I’m only 45 years old. I’m still too young for Pebble.”
Twitter: @misterfleming
