Newport Beach Concours d'Elegance

On Sunday, October 6th, 18 pristine Ferraris were placed at the top end of the Pelican Beach Country Club driving range where this year?s Newport Beach Concours d?Elegance was held. The Ferrari "tifosi" gladly made the trek up the hill to see the wide model and color range of outstanding cars on display.

The Ferraris assumed their rightly place at the Newport Beach Concours, looking down upon all the other marques.

Well, maybe it wasn?t that high, but Cy Yedor had an altitude nose bleed and several cars had to be re-jetted in order to make it up the hill.

The show theme this year was "German Masterpieces" which resulted in a great showing of Mercedes, Porsche and BMW entrants. 300 SL?s and 356 Porsches turned out in large numbers (15 of the former and 20 of the latter) as well as grosser Mercedes from the teens, twenties and thirties. Alas, not a single Borgward, Wartburg or Fahrtskeller made the scene and they were certainly masterpieces.

A spectator complates Steve Tillack?s beautiful yellow 250 SWB. "how can a car be that fast and that pretty?"

Yes, judges, everything is in order here..

The Ferraris were split up into two classes based on newer and older cars. First place in the older cars went to Michael Yedor?s 1964 250 GT Lusso and in the newer group a seldom seen and rare 1968 206 GT Dino entered by Bill LeMasters took the first place trophy.

A partial list of other trophy winners would include Gary Thieltges? 1958 250 Ellena Coupe and the beautiful 1962 250 SWB shown by Steve Tillack. A special award was given to the 1957 250 Testarossa Spyder Prototype brought by Fred Peters and Chuck Betz. The hard luck award must go to Phil Tripoli?s 1969 365 GT which had the only flat tire at the show. Quite a few FCA members spent the morning helping out with the judging duties.

The hard luck of Phil Tripoli and his 365 GT 2+2.

All in all, it was a delightful day of great cars, good weather and excellent crowd.

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