Star cars: the beauty, excitement and tension of Pebble Beach

Road Cars

Pebble Beach is perhaps the most highly coveted concours of all – Andrew Frankel sums up the unique atmosphere of the rarefied automotive event

Cars line up at 2021 Pebble Beach Concours

A plethora of vintage machinery is displayed at and judge at Pebble Beach, probably the most highly regarded concours of all

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Andrew Frankel

You’ll not be surprised to learn that it’s not very often I get asked to judge a car competition. I’m not a gifted designer, a fabled engineer or an incredible driver. I’m just a journalist, if I can even dignify what I do with such a term. Car hack is probably more accurate. If I may modify a well-worn phrase to make it both more meaningful and accurate: those who can do, their actions reported upon by those who can’t. But it does happen. The one I enjoyed most was judging the Bentley centenary Concours at Salon Privé, held at Blenheim Palace in 2019. I felt, for once, that I knew enough about the subject for my opinion to be worth something, and there was a heck of a party that evening.

But I have no doubt that one of many reasons the invitations are so few and far between is that I struggle to take car shows as seriously as I should. Always have. And I’m writing this now as cars are in the process of being prepped and polished for the perhaps the most coveted Concours of them all, held at Pebble Beach on August 21st, the last day of Monterey Car Week.

To be clear, I have never been a judge at the event everyone simply calls ‘Pebble’. But I have been and now I know the admission price, I am even more glad that when I’ve gone on the past it has always been as someone’s guest. Tickets cost $500 (£400) and all that does is get you through the door and onto the rolling lawn in front of the Pacific Ocean. No refunds, no transfers, no exchanges.

Porsche prototypes at 2021 Pebble Beach concourse

Road cars and competition machinery lines up

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

There is no question the cars you will find there are rare and exceptional but actually it’s the people I go to see, specifically the owners, precisely around judging time. Because that’s when you get to see grown men (and, yes, in my experience they have always been men), many of whom have built up enormous businesses and employed thousands of people, turned into schoolboys once more.

They know exactly who the judges are, and can see them roving around the grounds and wait almost at attention as their cars are approached. Captains of industry become humble supplicants, obliged to doff metaphorical caps and tug imaginary forelocks in the direction of those in whose hands their cars briefly reside. For they know this: a win at Pebble will add another telephone number to the presumably already astonishing value of their machine. And for that it is worth becoming someone else entirely.

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Until it goes wrong. Which it does. One of the things owners are required to do is demonstrate that their cars actually function, and quite right too: a car that fails in this most basic regard is a car no more, just a piece of car-shaped furniture. And I remember well an owner proudly going through his pride and joy’s controls: horn, lights, wipers, left indicator, right… suddenly he looked thunderstruck: the right indicator had failed to illuminate. “It was working earlier,” he pleaded, “we checked everything this morning.” The judges were unfailingly polite but were soon on their way again. Whether that loose wire or blown bulb had affected their deliberations to the smallest degree I cannot say, but by the thunderstruck look on the owner’s face I know he thought it did.

But that was as nothing compared to what happened when I saw the judges inspecting the engine of a beautiful front engine V12 Ferrari Berlinetta, a four cam 275GTB if memory serves. The car looked perfect, the ultimate development of Colombo’s iconic motor spinning at idle at least as smoothly as it did when new. The crackle black cam covers were immaculate, the sextet of downdraft Weber carbs gleamed. The judges were huddled under the bonnet nodding approvingly until… until one of them suddenly stood bolt upright, took a step back and, addressing the owner’s mechanic who was sitting in the driver’s seat awaiting further instructions, said suddenly and sharply “switch it off! Switch it off now!”

What had happened? Had they detected a death rattle which meant it would soon start firing pistons out the side of the block like a Gatling gun onto the immaculately manicured Pebble Beach lawn? An unpinned hand grenade under the exhaust manifold perhaps? No. The source of such alarm was a single drip of fuel from perhaps not the tightest of unions under one of the Webers. Someone had forgotten to double check one small nut and now the judges were walking away. The owner gave chase but in his heart he must have known it was over. I heard one mutter “fire risk” and that was that.

Car at 2021 Pebble Beach Concourse

Nervous owners wait for their car to be judged

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

But in that moment, my thoughts were for neither owner nor judges, but the mechanic still sitting, stricken, in the driver’s seat of the now silent Ferrari. I saw the owner striding back towards the car, with a very different expression on his face to that borne on his outbound journey. I didn’t hang around to hear the ensuing conversation, but it was unlikely to be pretty.

I was then and remain now in two minds about such events. On the one hand I resent the fact they encourage owners to keep cars in a condition that means it is almost impossible to use them, but on the other the focus of really good Concours have changed over the years: of course the cars must be spotlessly clean and most are in an immaculate state (though happily you still see some that have been more preserved than restored and proper patina is by no means unwelcome), but really it’s originality the judges tend to reward most. Which is exactly as it should be: a few weeks back I attended another Bentley Drivers Club Concours, and amid all the rebodied 4½-litre and Speed Six Le Mans replicas with their slatted bonnets secured with leather straps, there stood a demure 6½-litre saloon, so far as I could tell exactly as it was when it left the coachbuilders 95 years ago, an immaculately attired old gentleman in a field full of swashbuckling buccaneers. I loved it.