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© Michael Fu
Monthly’s guide to the 2017
HILTON HEAD ISLAND
MOTORING FESTIVAL & CONCOURS D’ELEGANCE PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE HILTON HEAD ISLAND MOTORING FESTIVAL & CONCOURS D’ELEGANCE
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CONCOURS 2017
5 REASONS THIS WILL BE THE BEST CONCOURS EVER Elegance and horsepower come together at the Hilton Head Island Motoring Festival.
Bugatti
BY BARRY KAUFMAN
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ince its inception, the Hilton Head Island Motoring Festival & Concours d’Elegance has gone from strong to stronger. What began as a wellcurated but modest collection of classic cars has unfolded into a week of events both on and off the island. There are still the classic cars, of course, but these days you’ll find them among a slew of special exhibitions and guest appearances from some of the biggest names in the automotive world. So why should you attend this year’s Concours, to be held Oct. 27 through Nov. 5? We’re glad you asked, because it just so happens we have a list.
Cadillac is the honored marque at the 2017 Hilton Head Island Motoring Festival & Concours d’Elegance. This 1912 Cadillac 30 is owned by Bob and Jennifer Lancaster of Wilmington, N.C.
1. WHO’S YOUR CADDY?
Considered by many to be the “Cadillac of Cars,” this year’s Honored Marque will be that emblem of American excellence, Cadillac. In celebration of the line’s history of automotive inspiration, the Concours d’Elegance will host three classes on Nov. 5: Classics (1916-1948), Production October 2017 89
(1949-1962) and Production (19631973). During the competition, festivalgoers will get to see firsthand how Cadillac revolutionized the industry, from the first electric starter and lights to the design element that would define cool: the tail fin. The Concours itself will include a variety of historic Caddys, from a 1908 Model T Victoria Touring to a ’55 St. Moritz. And don’t miss the 1959 Cadillac Cyclone brought to the show by Pinnacle Collector Jeff Gross — it’s packed with high-tech goodies and will make you weep for the future of automobiles that could have been.
2. BURN RUBBER AT THE BIRTHPLACE OF AMERICAN GRAND PRIX
One little fun tidbit of Savannah history: it’s the birthplace of Grand Prix racing in America. The Automobile Club of America held its first American Grand Prize in 1908 on a 25-mile stock car track comprising what is now Savannah’s Victory Drive. Nearly 250,000 people showed up to watch the Thanksgiving Day race, including Horace Dodge, Henry Ford and the president of Firestone Tires (who was forced to sleep in the city jail because everywhere else was booked). Today, that tradition is honored on Hutchinson Island’s Grand Prize of America Road Course as part of the motoring festival’s opening event: The Savannah Speed Classic, held at The Westin Savannah Harbor Golf Resort & Spa. For three days, you can get up close and personal with the racing world, gaining insight into life on the track and the thrill of competition. And speaking of history, this year marks a momentous occasion for the Grand Prize of America track. It’s celebrating the 20th anniversary of its first
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race, the Indy Lights Dixie Crystals Grand Prix in 1997.
3. BY LAND AND BY AIR
You think it’s all just jaw-dropping cars at this year’s motoring festival? Think again. Automotive and aviation elegance will be paired in several events that will — ahem — elevate this year’s festival. Held Nov. 3 at Hilton Head Island Airport, the Flights & Fancy Aeroport Gala parks gorgeous Concours cars side-by-side on the runway with vintage airplanes in an upscale celebration of transportation. Special entertainment, succulent Lowcountry cuisine and flowing champagne will accompany an evening spent strolling the hangars of the airport and basking in the aeronautical splendor of yesteryear. Then on Nov. 4, free shuttles from the Car Club Showcase will bring festivalgoers to the Aero Expo, giving them a chance to tour aviation history. Everything form vintage flying machines to advanced aircraft will be on display during the event, free with Car Club Showcase admission.
4. CELEBRATE IN STYLE
While the Hilton Head Motoring Festival puts the focus squarely on automotive grandeur, it is still a festival. And festivals are serious business on Hilton Head. Along with a slew of events are several chances to get out there and have a good time with friends and neighbors, starting with the Savannah Speed Classic Pace Lap Party at Savannah’s City Market. Starting at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 27, this is your chance to meet the drivers and check out some of the machines that will be taking to the track after the party. On Nov. 4, the South Carolina Yacht Club will host “Design Among The Stars,” a soiree that lets you dine and mingle with some of the automotive industry’s most inspired designers. Other events include “Cars & Cigars” at Carolina Cigars, a Ferrari dinner at Michael Anthony’s Cucina Italiana and even a special showing at Park Plaza Cinema of “24 Hour War,” which documents the fight between Ford and Ferrari at LeMans.
CONCOURS 2017
5. CONCOURS EVENTS: WHEN AND WHERE
Here are the festival highlights. For a full schedule of events, go to hhiconcours.com/events. Oct. 26: Pace Lap Party From 5:30-8:30 p.m., Ellis Square will host the official kick-off part for the Savannah Speed Classic. There will be live music, food and beverages from City Market restaurants, plus your chance to check out a few cars competing in the race. Free.
Nov. 3: Flights & Fancy Aeroport Gala The festival touches down at the Hilton Head Island Airport for an opening gala from 7-10 p.m. featuring vintage and cutting-edge aircraft alongside a selection of exquisite cars from the Motoring Festival. Tickets start at $175.
lead a seminar from 9:30-10:30 a.m. at Port Royal Golf Clubhouse outlining the state of the market, current trends and more. Those just starting out and experienced collectors alike will find something to gain from this insightful panel discussion. $25 per person.
OCT. 27: SCAD Open Studio Night Tour SCAD’s Alexander Hall starting at 7 p.m. for a special open studio event. Free and open to the public.
Nov. 4: Car Club Showcase From m 9 a.m.-4 p.m., the fairways of Planter’s Row Golf Course at the Port Royal Golf Club will host car clubs from around the southeast and beyond, representing a variety of different makes, models and passions. Tickets start at $50.
Nov. 4: Design Among the Stars Join some of the automotive world’s finest designers starting at 6:30 p.m. at the South Carolina Yacht Club in a uniquely intimate setting. An upscale cocktail event will lead to a chance to bid on automotive art created on-site. Tickets $375 per person.
Oct. 27-29: Savannah Speed Classic Get up close and personal with blistering fast racing action as competitors take to the track at Grand Prize of America Road Course next to the Westin Savannah Harbor Golf Resort & Spa. Come as a spectator or register to race at hscrrace.com. Tickets start at $20. Nov. 2: Evening of Cars and Cigars Head to Carolina Cigars at 6:30 p.m. for an event combining elegant show cars and the finest cigars from around the world. Tickets are $50 per person.
Nov. 4: Aero Expo Missed your chance to check out the mix of aviation and automotive excellence during the gala? You can enjoy complimentary shuttle service to the airport with a ticket to the Car Club showcase and see all the aircraft and cars on display. Nov. 4: 2nd Annual SCM Insider’s Seminar The leading experts in collector cars will
Nov. 4-5: Concours d’Elegance The festival culminates in the grand Concours d’Elegance, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the Port Royal Golf Club, where cars from all over the world, including examples of honored marque Cadillac’s line, compete for recognition from judges. Tickets start at $55. M
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A DAY IN THE LIFE
Concours ‘Life’ exhibit looks at endurance racing BY BARRY KAUFMAN
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hink of the longest road trip you ever took: trekking across country in the family truckster, forcing down whatever drive-through food you could forage as you rolled down the endless highway. Think of the mental fatigue of staring down the same white lines for hours on end, each stretch of highway blending into the next. Now imagine doing that for 24 hours, knowing that the moment separating victory and defeat could happen in the blink of an eye. Boris Said has lived it, over and over again.
CONCOURS 2017
“It’s a totally different animal from your typical racing,” he said. Said is a veteran of several 24-hour endurance races, having achieved backto-back victories in 24 Hours of Daytona in 1997 and 1998 as well as a win at the 24 Hours Nürburgring in 2005. While most of us chafe at the notion of driving all the way down William Hilton Parkway and off of or onto Hilton Head Island, Said has made his mark as a true road warrior. “I drove for 16 hours in the 1998 24 Hours of Daytona,” he said. “I won that year in the GT class in a BMW m3.” If that sounds crazy, the organizers of the race would agree, as the very next year they set a strict 14-hour limit. If a governing body had to step in and keep racers from pushing themselves to the limit, this is an endurance sport like no other. It’s an extreme test of a driver’s ability to stem off white-line fever while in the grips of a competition in which the tide could turn at any moment. How much coffee does it take to stay behind the wheel that long? You’d be surprised. “None. It’s just pure adrenaline,” Said said. Get a taste of this remarkable blend of white-knuckle competitive racing and gut-checking endurance at this year’s “Life for 24 Hours” exhibit, taking place Nov. 4-5 at the annual Hilton Head Island Motoring Festival & Concours d’Elegance. Along with a panel discussion featuring Said, festivalgoers will get a chance to take a look at some of the tough-asnails machines that have made history in the world of 24-hour racing. A few standouts from the exhibit include a 2001 BMW and a Saleen — both driven by Said — as well as the legendary ’66 Corvette once owned by Roger Penske that competed in the very first 24 Hours of Daytona. Every car has a story, and this particular Vette’s is a doozy. As the legend goes, the car was leading the GT class in the middle of the night when it slammed into a slower-moving Triumph, crumpling the front end. Risking disqualification due to a lack of headlights, the team improvised by strapping a pair of heavy-duty flashlights to the hood with duct tape. The judges, satisfied with the homemade headlights, let the car back on the track. The Penske Corvette finished first in its class and 11th overall, and set a new GT record. M
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© Michael Furman
Photography by Peter Harholdt, compliments of the Collier Collection @ The Revs Institute
THE
CURATOR
This year’s Pinnacle Collector, Ken Gross, is a wealth of automotive contradictions. BY BARRY KAUFMAN
© Michael Furman
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These works of mobile art have toured everywhere stablished in 2013, the honor of being UPPER LEFT: Ghia from Portland to Atlanta, and now Gross is bringing a named Pinnacle Award Collector of the Gilda; UPPER RIGHT: few of his favorites to Hilton Head Island. Hilton Head Island Motoring Festival & Delahaye engine; “Since I’ve curated these 10 exhibitions in art Concours d’Elegance has, as its name LOWER RIGHT: Bugatti museums, when they talked to me (about receiving implies, traditionally gone to a collector. the Pinnacle Award) I said let’s get one car that This year’s honoree, Ken Gross, is anything but represents an exhibition, so we have four exhibitions traditional. represented,” he said. “I’ve been a writer my whole life and I For starters, he’s not bringing his collection to this year’s event, to be held Oct. 27 to Nov. 5. Instead, he’s bringing other enjoy interpreting cars for people and explaining why they’re people’s collections. As a towering figure in the automotive important.” The four he’ll be bringing along to this year’s Concours world and celebrated curator of automotive art exhibitions at have each played a part in Gross’ museum shows, and each museums around the country, he’s brought to life 10 magnificent shows built around the singular beauty of the automobile. tells a story. 94 hiltonheadmonthly.com
CONCOURS 2017
The 1959 Cadillac Cyclone, which Gross curated from the GM Heritage Collection in Sterling Heights, Michigan, and included in his “Dream Cars” exhibit at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, exemplifies the forward-thinking aesthetic of the exhibit with its rocket ship design and high-tech upgrades like built-in radar. “It was one of the first cars to have a form of obstacle detection,” he said. The 1937 Bugatti 57S Atalante was part of an exhibit called “Allure of the Automobile,” shown at both the High Museum and the Portland Museum of Art. Now owned by William “Chip” Connor of Atlanta, the Bugatti is one of just 42 produced before production was halted during World War II. The Revs Institute will share a special-edition 1937 Delahaye Roadster for Gross’ Concours exhibit. Rounding out the collection will be a 1955 Ghia Gilda owned by Buzz Calkins, a former Indy Racing League driver. Beyond being honored as a collector without a collection, Gross is also a study in contradictions: He straddles the line between two very different automotive worlds. A gearhead at heart, he is a prized judge at Concours events around the world, from Pebble Beach to Italy; a celebrated automotive author with several books to his credit and bylines in everything from Playboy and the Robb Report to Old Cars Weekly; and the 2014 recipient of the Automotive Hall of Fame’s Distinguished Service Citation Award. “Generally, classic car people don’t talk to hot rod people and vice versa, but I speak both languages,” he said. Indeed, Gross’ own personal collection includes four hot rods, stemming from an innate love of American horsepower that started when he was just a kid. “I had a 1944 Ford coupe when I was in high school and I took an Oldsmobile engine from a junkyard and was able to install it, to my father’s surprise,” he said. Even decades after that, when I get in it — particularly at night — there’s a sense of déjà vu, the sound, the feeling of the steering, the lights. It’s a little bit like going back in time.” While the classic car crowd and the DIY grease monkeys rarely see eye to eye, Gross has not only been able to keep one foot in each world, he’s been able to bring them together on several occasions. Along with people like Bruce Meyer, Gross helped convince the powers that be at Pebble Beach that a little bit of American ingenuity would be a perfect complement to the pristine Duesenbergs and Delahayes of the Concours. They relented, and in 1997 Pebble Beach saw its first class of hot rods. “More and more collectors are realizing that the basic roots of American racing came out of people who built their own cars and raced them,” he said. To complement the collection of cars Gross has curated for this year’s Concours on Hilton Head, he has handselected several pieces of automotive artwork to display. “I’m excited to go to Hilton Head and thrilled they’ve seen fit to honor these exhibitions. The real credit goes to these collectors who are willing to part with their treasures for four to five months,” he said. “And you certainly have to respect the wonderful names behind these cars: Exner and Bugatti, Harley Earl and Bill Mitchell. They were like artists in metal back in their eras. They deserve to be recognized today.” M October 2017 95
MICHELIN JUNIOR CHALLENGE DESIGN Launches in Beaufort County BY MELINDA COPP
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he next great idea in mobility could come from anywhere. That’s why tire manufacturer Michelin has joined forces with the Hilton Head Island Motoring Festival & Concours d’Elegance to offer a unique opportunity to students in Beaufort County. The Michelin Challenge Design is a competition that invites designers from around the world to share their ideas about the future of mobility. The program started 18 years ago and since 2001 has included entries from college students in 126 countries. 96 hiltonheadmonthly.com
“We realized the global voice of design was coming from a small, classically trained group,” said Ben Ebel, chairman of Michelin’s global Challenge Design program. “But we believe design is more of crowd source than what was historically followed.” Now, for the first time, Michelin is expanding its design competition to include high school students, and will launch the expanded program in Beaufort County to coincide with the Hilton Head Island Motoring Festival & Concours d’Elegance, to be held this year from Oct. 27 to Nov. 5.
Concours, with its Driving Young America charity program, hopes to get kids excited about the automotive industry. That program made it the perfect partner to introduce Michelin’s Junior Challenge Design competition. “I’m thrilled Michelin has chosen our event as a pilot for this,” said Carolyn Vanagel, president of the Hilton Head Island Motoring Festival & Concours d’Elegance. “We’ll be the model that they could potentially roll out in other places.” This year’s competition theme is “Le Mans 2030: Design for the Win,” and students were challenged to create a racecar that could win the world’s greatest endurance race in 2030. Participants submitted illustrations of their racecars and a onepage explanation of the design’s powertrain and key innovations. “We’re not looking for the next great design,” Ebel said. “We’re looking for the next great question.” Finding that question, Ebel said, could help Michelin and other automakers meet the challenges they’ll face when addressing the future of mobility. Past themes at the Michelin Challenge Design have included “Drive Your Passion,” in which entrants designed vehicles that elicited pure driving pleasure on an iconic road; and “Mobility for All,” which focused on creating a simple, affordable, functional design for a personal, family, or commercial vehicle in an underserved community. “Entrants over the years have provided a great picture of what questions we’ll be facing,” said Ebel. When Michelin brought its idea for the competition to the Lowcountry, company officials spoke to representatives from the school district, high school principals, and community leaders to reach as many kids as possible and get all of Beaufort County involved. The program is both an art and a science challenge. Michelin was founded by two brothers—Andre, an engineer, and Edouard, an artist—and the company continues to operate under the belief that mobility design lives in the combination of those two fields. “I thought it sounded like an interesting opportunity to expose kids to connections and opportunities,” said Brian Ryman, assistant principal of Bluffton High School, who reached out to staff in the science department to help mentor students as they create their entries. Other high schools in the county have art, robotics and automotive programs with mentors, supplies and technology available to students.
CONCOURS 2017
“I know what I think of when I look at the challenge,” said Ryman. “But students are different now and I’m curious to see what they come up with.” The judging panel includes Ralph Gilles, head of design for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles; Paul Snyder, the head of transportation design at the College for Creative Studies; Ed Welburn, vice president of global design for General Motors; and Frank Campanale, who serves on the board of trustees for CCS. “All four judges bring different interests and different looks at the work of these students,” Ebel said. “We feel very fortunate to have such heavy hitters involved.” The winning entrants from each school will win a trip upstate to Michelin headquarters. The winning students will tour the facility, have lunch with the executives, and possibly tour another automobile manufacturing facility in the area, exposing them to the opportunities in manufacturing that exist in South Carolina. Michelin is a mobility company that designs, manufactures and sells tires for every type of vehicle, from bicycles to airplanes. Headquartered in Greenville, the company employs 9,500 people in
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I KNOW WHAT I THINK OF WHEN I LOOK AT THE CHALLENGE, BUT STUDENTS ARE DIFFERENT NOW AND I’M CURIOUS TO SEE WHAT THEY COME UP WITH.
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-Brian Ryman, assistant principal of Bluffton High School
the state and more than 22,750 in North America. It operates 20 major manufacturing plants in 16 locations in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. “Students start choosing their path in the eighth grade, and STEM is not always the first choice,” said Brian Remsberg, director of consumer public relations for Michelin. “Design education is important to Michelin because it exposes students to possible futures in manufacturing that they may not have considered.” Each student who submitted an entry will receive two free tickets to the Concours d’Elegance, to be held Nov. 5. In addition to the trip to Michelin, the winning student from each participating
high school will receive a $500 scholarship, or $250 per team member. The top drawings will be displayed at the Concours d’Elegance and at the Arts Center of Coastal Carolina following the car show. The grand prize winning entrant’s high school will also receive a $1,000 grant. But the most exciting part of the competition is the potential for new ideas. “High school kids today were brought up in the computer age. Because they aren’t chained down to any old thinking, they can really be creative,” said Lee Niner, vice chairman of Driving Young America. “The industry is about innovation; this is where it starts.” M
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