Dave Olimpi Races, Rallies and Reveres Auto Royalty

Dave Olimpi Races, Rallies and Reveres Auto Royalty

By Leonard Shapiro

For a few days virtually every August since 1986, Dave Olimpi has walked up and down the 18th fairway countless times at the world-famous Pebble Beach Links course in Monterey, California.

Olimpi, who lives in the Middleburg area, doesn’t play or follow golf. But he and thousands of fellow automobile aficionados make the annual pilgrimage to pay homage to more than 200 magnificent vintage vehicles on display all over the 500-plus yards of turf from tee to green high above the Pacific Ocean down below.

Dave Olimpi

They’re on these hallowed golfing grounds for the annual and iconic Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. It’s the flagship event of Pebble Beach Automotive Week, considered by many as the world’s premier celebration of cars past, present and future.

According to Concours d’Elegance promotional literature, “This is the ultimate event for every car enthusiast…Each year, the finest collector cars gather on the 18th fairway…to compete to be named Best of Show — the ultimate award for automobiles.

“Experts critique their elegance, technical merit, and history. And crowds come from all corners of the globe to cheer their favorites. In tandem with the competition between extraordinary historic automobiles, the Concours also serves as host to some of the most anticipated concepts and new car debuts.”

Olimpi was there again a few months ago. He’s been in the car business all his adult life and is now a highly regarded consultant. Specializing in vintage, mostly European, vehicles—Ferrari, Porsche, Mercedes, Lancia—he assists clients near and far in marketing their automobiles.

He also judges the occasional Concours event as a hobby, and fulfilled a long-time bucket list goal when he was asked to judge the Ferrari class at the Pebble Beach event in 2017, and again in 2021.

Olimpi started his own vintage auto business in 1996 and now operates out of his home office. He also can assist clients in everything from routine service to specialized restorations, no matter the make. He also will expedite pre-purchase inspections, appraisals, auctions and vehicle transportation.

The Lancia Olimpi helped break in around Switzerland and Italy.

As such, he considers the Pebble Beach event as must-go, must-see.

“I went out there for the first time in 1986 and I was immediately hooked,” he said. “The week is a convention, it’s a trade show, it’s a competition. There are some incredible auctions with many high value cars, to put it mildly.”

Indeed, 790 cars sold for a sales totaling $469 million at the auctions in Monterey in August, and 110 cars went for $1 million or more, a record. The top sale for the week was at RM Sotheby’s when a 1955 Ferrari 410 Sport Spider sold for $22 million.

Olimpi grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs in the 1960s and ‘70s. He described that area back then as a hotbed of imported car dealerships.

“Like so many guys of my generation,” he said, “I was always drawn to cars.”

So much so that when a friend who was involved in a racing team asked Olimpi to join up as a codriver, he earned his competition license and began driving Porsche 911s on the International Motor Sports Association series of endurance events at storied venues like Sebring and Watkins Glen. He raced from 1972-77, and, he said, “it was always non-stop, working or racing.” After five years, it was time to stop racing.

These days, Olimpi occasionally competes in road rallies, also competitive events at far lower speeds where cars go out on a pre-charted route. The idea is not to see how fast they can zoom but how they can make it to check points at exactly the right time.

This past April, he and a friend from Florida who had recently purchased a vintage Lancia joined up with two other drivers in a BMW navigating back roads through Switzerland and Italy. They picked up the car in Zurich, then drove over 700 miles of paved roads, many of them through tricky and treacherous mountain passes.

Olimpi described it as “five days of driving as fast as we could from one lake to another in Switzerland and Northern Italy to break in a freshly-restored 1969 Lancia Fulvia 1600 HF over some of the most challenging roads I have ever driven on.”

One month later it was on to Pebble Beach. No golf, of course, but gorgeous vintage cars all around, just the way Dave Olimpi has always liked them.