Last weekend, we visited Unique, a concours d’elegance that brought the world’s most original cars together in Florence.
The classic car collecting world is brimming with all kinds of fascinating things and subtleties that completely bypass the public at large. And that’s a great pity because cars are part of our cultural heritage and a testament to the tastes and technologies of every era of the last hundred years or so.
We already broached the subject of historic car racing when the Monza 1,000 Kilometres was on and we covered the concours d’elegance at the Villa d’Este on Lake Como too. Pistunzen gave an account of his experiences at Pebble Beach to boot. This time, however, I wanted to talk to you abut a truly quality event which took place for the second year running in Florence recently. It’s a concours d’elegance that’s so unique, it’s actually called Unique, and it focuses solely on cars that have made a genuinely special contribution to this history of their marque or model. As a result, it was attended by a host of once-offs and others that had achieved great things in competition as well as prototypes of future cars, and so on.
Organised with exemplary meticulousness by the Binelli brothers, who also run the MAC Group in Genoa, the concours had as its venue the extraordinary gardens of the Four Seasons Hotel. There were around 100 cars present, many of which had come from the pen of the highly original stylist Zagato. In fact, a Ferrari 250 GT bodied by Zagato and owned by David Sidorick, won Best in Show in the end. All of the Ferraris at the concours were of huge interest and many had already won at other concours. These include the Jaime Muldoon’s 375 America and Kenneth Roath’s 250 Europa. We also liked two 212 Export Vignales, one owned by Dutchman Oscar Brocades Zaalberg and the other by Peter MacCoy. A very different interpretation of the compact body. Another stunner was the 500 Mondial berlinetta, a truly unique car with a raucous Lampredi four-cylinder engine. Sporting its original French blue livery, the car is still owned by Frenchman Pierre Mellinger. Last but no least, Christian Gabka’s 250 Boano was another real original as was the only Ferrari sports prototype present, the 1962 268 Shark Nose, which competed at Le Mans and is lovingly cared for by Bernard Karl.
It might come as a surprise to you that collectors of this calibre would go to the trouble of transporting their cars, which are worth millions of euro, all the way to a concours in Italy, and pay a hefty entry fee on top of that. Equally surprising, albeit in a negative way, is that there are no Italian collectors in this exclusive world. The answer to the first point is that only concours of great prestige are worth the investment of so much time and money. But it’s an investment that will enhance the value of the winners on the collector’s market. When it comes to Italy and our dearth of collectors, the new is grim: our nation does nothing to encourage that very wealthy world and, as a result, is missing out on the revenues and the other prestigious knock-on business it generates.
PUBLISHED IN EDITOR'S CORNER BY ANTONIO GHINI ON 09.11.2011
Credit: Ferrari S.p.A. (www.ferrari.com)
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