Elegant Autos Assemble at Concours
‘People will judge you ... just by looking at your car.’ --Rick Exley Clean, mean and pristine.
That about sums up the 120 exotic automobiles on display at the Newport GT Concours d’Elegance, a spectacle on the grass attended by 5,000 on Sunday at The Newporter Resort.
It was not a car show.
“There are car shows and then there’s Concours,” explained judge Bob Turnage. “Concours basically involves beginning with authenticity, but then proceeding as far past the original as possible. You can take an original paint job, for instance, then you can go four or five levels to surpass that quality.”
The show, one of the most prestigious among sports car owners, attracted everything from Tigas to Cheetahs, from Imsas to Cisitalias, from Barchettas to Bertones to BiTurbos--in any case, enough of the exquisite machines to turn the most adamant anti-materialist into a drooling, coveting mess.
A 1985 Lamborghini Countach, blacker-than-black with a whiter-than-white interior, and a local entry, attracted plenty of attention.
“You won’t see a car like this on the East Coast,” noted Rick Exley of Costa Mesa, who personally gave the Countach its first detailing between 9:30 Saturday night and 5:30 Sunday morning. “You can’t keep a car like this nice in weather like that. Here, you can keep a car nice.”
Exley kept the exhibition-only entry nice enough over the course of the day to earn a special award for cleanliness. “I’ve been wiping this car every five minutes all day,” he confided. “See here? That’s a leg print. Sweat. Somebody got too near.”
Exley felt location was a definite factor as to the quality of the show. “It has a lot to do with this area,” he said. “It’s a very car-conscious crowd around here. People will judge you--you, your personality--just by looking at your car.
“You’ll rarely see a dirty Mercedes in Newport, ‘cause in Newport, if it’s not clean, people’ll hit you up about it at a light. They’ll pull up alongside you, and they’ll tell you. They’ll say, ‘Why don’t you wash your car?’ ”
Offered Insight
Allen Epstein of North Hollywood, who entered a ’72 Pantera, offered some insight as to how one ends up getting involved in Concours showing.
“We were just going to paint this car. It was a black car that needed to be repainted,” Epstein recalled.
“Then we said, ‘Well, as long as we’re going to paint it, we might as well take it apart and do it right. We might as well take the doors off. Then, we might as well take the glass out.’ The car just kept getting taken further and further apart.
“Then, when we went to put it all back together again, we said, ‘Well, now, you don’t want to put this old piece of junk back on there, do you? This is only a couple hundred, and this is only a couple hundred . . . .
“So now it’s all brand new.”
Epstein, who bought the Pantera for $15,000 and spent more than $30,000 bringing it to its present condition, felt he had little chance of winning.
“It’s pretty rare for a Pantera to beat a Ferrari,” he said. “Pantera owners often won’t even compete, because they don’t feel they get a fair shake. There’s so much mystique to the Ferrari marque . . . .”
Epstein’s entry won Best in Show.
Ladies Choice
A special Ladies Choice award went to a 1985 Ferrari GTO owned by Jere Clark of Newport Beach.
Farthest Entry was Barry Smith’s ’85 Porsche 911, which hails from New York City.
Assisting at the show were the Newport Jaycees and their president, Bill Ennis; the women of Soroptomists International, Newport Harbor, and their president, Sally Brockett, and contestants in the upcoming Miss Newport Beach pageant, which will take place at the new Irvine Hilton and Towers July 21.
Honorary Concours judges included TV commentator and race car driver Dick Smith; ex-racer Lew Spencer, now general manager of Shelby America, and Dutch Mandel, editor of Auto Week Magazine.
A portion of the proceeds from the Concours, $2,000, benefited the Mardan Center of Educational Therapy; the center, located in Costa Mesa, has provided educational and clinical services to learning-disabled and emotionally disturbed children and their families for 23 years.
“Flights of Fantasy,” a black-tie benefit for the Laguna Beach College of Art, won’t take place till mid-August. But chairman Joleen Parham is already seeing spots. Ink Spots.
“I didn’t know there were so many Ink Spots,” said Parham at a party Friday at the oceanfront, cliff-top home of Linda Irvine Gaede, located in Laguna Beach. Designing Women, the fund-raising auxiliary of the college, sponsored the reception as a thank-you for 100 of its patrons.
“It turns out the original Ink Spots (vocal group) are all dead except one, and now there are four or five groups of Ink Spots,” Parham said. (The first Ink Spots were formed in the ‘30s.) “Anyway, we made sure we hired the best Ink Spots for our benefit.”
According to Parham, proceeds of $75,000 are assured from the affair, which will take place Aug. 17 at historic Moss Point. “And we raised more tonight,” she said. “With the silent and live auctions, I’d like us to clear $100,000.”
College director Patricia Caldwell said the school will officially be able to offer a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree beginning in Fall. “In a 10-day period of time,” Caldwellreported, “we’ve had more than 1,000 inquiries from new students, 15 from France.”
Also among the guests was Tom Van Sant, who is creating a (secret) artwork for the affair--he’s best known in this area for the giant wind chimes in front of Robinson’s at Fashion Island--and Designing Women president Betty Kemp. Gaede and Marie Pezzlo co-chaired the party; Jean Tandowsky entertained at the piano.
