My First Pebble Experience

With the Concours season starting in California, my memory was jogged to my first and only Pebble Beach Road Races.

In 1956, as a freshman engineering student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (SLO) several friends and I heard of a sports car race in Carmel, just up the coast from Poly. The race was Saturday and Sunday, April 21^st & 22^nd. I knew a little about sports cars, having kept track of the Mercedes 196 that Fangio drove winning the Grand Prix championships in 1954/55 but little else. We decided to head up to Carmel and check out the action. Early Saturday morning before the sun was up the five of us packed into a friend’s 1954 Olds two-door with a 3 speed “ex-CHP Car” (painted all black), and up north we went on the 2-lane 101 to Salinas and then west on Highway 68 to Carmel.