24th Annual Amelia Island Concours Sees a Big Ferrari Win
After the rescheduling necessary due to the inclement weather forecast in the past two years, the 24th Annual Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance was blessed with fine weather for the duration of the event, allowing everything to run to the original schedule. Thus the 10th and 18th fairways of the Golf Club of Amelia Island, adjacent to the host Ritz-Carlton Hotel, once again hosted the Concours in its normal Sunday slot.
The Honoree for the 2019 event was ex-Ferrari and Porsche works driver, and six time winner of the Le Mans 24 Hour Race, Jacky Ickx, who also has the 1979 CanAm Championship crown and a Paris-Dakar rally win on his CV. The feature classes this year were a celebration of the Porsche 962, the Mercedes-Benz 500K-540K series, the Jaguar XK-120, the 250 GT SWB, and 50 Years of the NHRA Gainesville Raceway. Aside from the feature classes, each year concours founder and Chairman Bill Warner and his team always come up with an eclectic mix of classes, often quite off the wall.
Apart from all the cars and motorcycles entered in the concours, there were numerous manufacturer displays, notably those from Acura, Aston Martin, BMW, Cadillac, Infiniti, McLaren, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, some of whom were also offering test drives in their latest offerings. There was also the free to enter MotorXpo show across the street, with another raft of automobiles to be viewed, including a supercar display.
There were two classes for Ferrari, one for the featured 250 GT SWB Berlinetta model, which had seven examples, including the unique Bertone bodied example, the Pininfarina “Speciale” bodied chassis, together with an example of the LWB Interim model, which was the forerunner of the definitive SWB body style. The second Ferrari class was for GT road cars, which spanned from a 1952 212 Export Cabriolet through to a 250 GT SWB California Spyder. Naturally there were examples in the Cars of Jacky Ickx class, these being a pair of 312 P(B) models and a 312 F1 car, whilst there were also further examples in other classes, notably the 335 S sports racing car in the Race Cars (1948-1957) class.
At the end of the day, after all the various class, corporate and special awards had been handed out to the winning recipients, it was the trumpet fanfare for the announcement of the Best of Show awards. The Concours de Sport Award was won by the 1957 Ferrari 335 S sports racing car entered by Cavallino Investments, whilst the Best of Show Concours D’Elegance Award was won by the 1938 Mercedes-Benz 540K Autobahn-Kurrier from the Keller Collection at the Pyramids in California.
Information from Keith Bluemel. Images from Keith Bluemel, Peter Singhof and Denis Tanney.
For more detailed information and images, plus the complete list of Ferrari entrants and chassis numbers, please see Cavallino 231, the June 1 issue coming out soon. Subscribe today and follow the exploits of these historic Ferraris.
