The Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance 2014 was held Sunday, March 9th on the fairways of The Golf Club of Amelia Island next to the Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island, Florida. With more than 325 cars and motorcycles in attendance, the judges at the 19th annual Amelia Island Concours were tasked with a difficult job of not only picking class winners, but also awarding the Best of Show Winners. The Concours awards Best of Show for two designations — Concours d’Elegance and Concours de Sport.
Best of Show Concours d’Elegance at the 2014 Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance went to the 1937 Horch 853 Voll and Ruhrbeck Sport Cabriolet, owned by Robert M. Lee of Sparks, Nevada. In 1935, the Horch Company, founded by August Horch in 1899, introduced a new model with a 5-liter, straight-eight engine called the Horch 850. The shorter wheelbase 853 model, which won Best of Show, was popular among Germany’s rich and famous, offering luxury at a competitive price. The last Horch was built in 1958. The winning automobile is one of only two Horchs ever to have been bodied by coachbuilder Voll and Ruhrbeck, which created custom coachwork for Bugatti, Maybach, Mercedes-Benz and Cord among others. Exhaustive efforts were made to restore this silver 853 to original standards, with no part going untouched as to authenticity or originality by the restoration team.
Best of Show Concours de Sport was awarded to the 1958 Scarab Mark II Sports Racer owned by Miles C. Collier and presented by the Revs Institute for Automotive Research of Naples, Florida. The three front-engined Scarab sports racers built by Troutman and Barnes for Lance Reventlow were created to contest the road courses of America against the European marques. Reventlow originally tried an Offenhauser engine in this car but the engine, designed to run on alcohol, was not successful running the gasoline required by the sports car ruling body. The sports racer known as Meister Brauser I was then fitted with a small block Chevrolet V-8, which was tailor-made for the American road and airport circuits of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
“I want to congratulate our panel of esteemed judges on this year’s best of show selections,” said Bill Warner, Chairman and Founder of the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance. “Both cars are excellent examples of unique pedigree and provenance and are well deserving of their awards. We worked hard to bring the best in automotive elegance and sport to this year’s event, and judging by our winners and the crowd I think we achieved our goal.”
Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance 2014 – Best of Show Photo Gallery
Amelia Island Concours de Sport 2014 – Best of Show Photo Gallery
Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance 2014 – Best of Show Winners Photo Gallery
[Source: Amelia Island Concours; photos: Neil Rashba, Dirk de Jager, Al Wolford and Sports Car Digest]
Random question – is it a rule that only pre-war cars are eligible for major concours wins, or is it just a tradition/custom?
Not a rule per se, but this tradition has been going on for far too long in our eyes. There are many great postwar cars that should give the pre-war cars a run for their money. That said, the details on the Horch were spectacular. What a car.
Agreed then… that Horch and others are something else but they all blend together for me. I know I spent far more time around the post-war sports and race cars at Amelia last weekend than the big pre-war boats.
Hello
Wow fantastic photos of the Scarab!!!
We Just finish a Video on continuation line of the 1958 Scarab roadster and we thought you may like this http://youtu.be/r0An9nt58W8
hope this is right up your alley
Thanks a lot