Rallying for a Good Cause

As he delicately edged the rare red 1959 Mercedes 300 SL convertible roadster onto MacArthur Boulevard, former professional race car driver Steve Millen remembered the highlights of his previous car rally experience.

It was at the Ivory Coast, and rally participants barreled down bumpy dirt roads spewing dust and rocks at 140 mph.

The 14th annual Newport Beach Concours D’Elegance Inaugural Sunset Rally, on the other hand, featured about 30 rally participants who paid $50 to cruise the city’s wide paved streets at a sedate 30 mph. They were in their own German luxury cars, honking as they passed selected Mercedes and BMW dealerships.

Anointed “Rally master,” Millen, 46, of Newport Beach, shrugged at the change of pace.

“It’s for a good cause,” he said, as he wondered about the sudden odd ticking noise coming from the engine. “That’s the part that motivated me to be involved.”

Along with today’s Concours D’Elegance car show at Pelican Hill Golf Club, the rally, which began at Sutton Place Hotel about 5:30 p.m. and circled through the city for an hour, will benefit the Assessment and Treatment Services Center. The nonprofit center in Newport Beach provides free therapy for troubled children and families.

For Irvine’s Bruce Strauss, owner of “14 Mercedes, some Corvettes, a ’68 Shelby Mustang,” among other cars, the rally was a chance to get together with “Mercedes people.”

“We talk about cars all night,” said Strauss, who toured the town with his family in his 1972 Mercedes 600 limousine.

For onlookers, the tough part was distinguishing between the rally participants and the scads of regular Newport Beach folks driving around in their pristine German luxury cars.

But most people took notice a few miles from the rally’s finish, when Sandra Hoyle, in her spanking-new, $80,000 white Porsche Carrera C4S, a gift to herself for her 37th birthday, raced two men in black Porsches.

“These two guys gave me a run for the money,” Hoyle said, at the rally’s end. “Then I took them at the next light.”