The Greenwich Concours d’Elegance will celebrate its 23rd year of showcasing significant cars, motorcycles and one-off automobile creations on June 1-3, 2018. With production and race cars created in the 1950s by Briggs Cunningham headlining the event at Roger Sherman Baldwin Park, overlooking the Greenwich, Connecticut, harbor on Long Island Sound. The Concours will also continue its tradition of holding two unique Concours back-to-back, with American cars and motorcycles on Saturday, and foreign marques on Sunday.
Miles Collier, one of America’s premier car collectors and founder of the Revs Institute, has been named the Grand Marshal for this year’s event. The Revs Institute in Naples, Florida, includes the Collier Collection, with 115 automobiles of special historic and technological importance. Many were acquired from the collection of the late Briggs Cunningham, a family friend. The Institute, which fosters deeper understanding of the transformative role of the automobile, also includes the Revs Digital Library of about 500,000 automotive photographs, with emphasis on racing scenes, and a research library with more than 20,000 book titles and complete runs of automotive periodicals in English, French, Italian, and German.
The display of Cunningham cars from around the country is being organized by “Barn Find Hunter” Tom Cotter, and Cunningham collector and historian Charles Schoendorf. Lined up along the waterfront both days will be the 1952 C-4R Le Mans roadster from the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum in Philadelphia, and most of the 25 Vignale-bodied C-3 coupes and cabriolets.
“This will be the most comprehensive collection of Cunningham race cars, touring cars and team cars assembled at one time and place, ever, including at the factory,” says Schoendorf. “A turnout of cars like this will not happen any time soon again, if ever.”
Cunningham, who died in 2003 at the age of 96, is best known as an America’s Cup skipper, racecar builder, driver and team owner. He made the Greens Farms section of Westport, Connecticut, his home from the ’20s through the ’60s. He fielded his early racecars for Sam and Cowles “Miles” Collier out of his carriage house, and later kept his car collection there before moving it out of state. The Cunningham family remained at the Greens Farms compound until the death of his daughter Lucie Cunningham McKinney in 2014.
On Saturday, cars from one of Cunningham’s most notable race drivers, the late John Fitch, will also be on display. A highly respected driver of the ’50s and ’60s, Fitch was also a safety pioneer and a World War II fighter pilot. The 1966 Fitch Phoenix, owned by Charles Mallory, will be part of the display, along with the 1952 Fitch-Whitmore Le Mans Special.
Sunday’s Concours will host a special display of Jaguars, with a focus on the rare pre-war SS Cars. The SS 100, SS 90, SS 1 Tourer and SS 1 Coupe are all scheduled to be shown.
The beneficiary of the Greenwich Concours for the 23rd year is Americares, a health-focused relief and development organization that responds to people affected by poverty or disaster with life-changing health programs, medicine and medical supplies. The Stamford, Connecticut-based organization is the world’s leading nonprofit provider of donated medicine and medical supplies.
VIP tickets are available on a limited basis. VIP tickets include early entry at 8 a.m., breakfast and lunch with the car collectors and judges, entrance to the Bonhams cocktail party on Friday night, poster, lapel pin, program and VIP lanyard. For complete information please visit www.greenwichconcours.com
