Sunday in the Park

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The Greenwich Concours d'Elegance is a two-day event, with Saturday devoted to antique and classic cars, and the Sunday a sports car extravaganza. Now in its 20th year, it is held at Roger Sherman Baldwin Park in its namesake Connecticut town. Perennial winners on Sunday are Ferraris of many stripes, of which there are plenty. This year, however, the judges were drawn to a simple and solitary theme, the sole Cisitalia present. The familiar and much lauded Model 202 bodied by Pinin Farina, it was the lesser-known cabriolet version in an understated metallic silver-blue, a 1951 car owned by Andrew Benenson. The general public, however, had other ideas, voting en masse for a car often dismissed by journalists as the most unfortunate combination of old and new, the MG TF. To some of us, however, this softening of traditional MG lines was welcome in its day, even if the mechanicals underneath were a bit old school. The people of 2015 obviously agreed, giving People's Choice to Keith and Brenda Murphy for this 1954 example.

There are always surprises at Greenwich, and this year's event didn't disappoint. The largest car was the most unusual, a 1985 Russian ZIL limousine. Formerly a reserve car in Mikhail Gorbachev's fleet, it somehow got left behind in the United States and came into private hands. At the other end of the spectrum was an Austin J-40 pedal car, a genre built in Wales by disabled miners and sold in high-end toy shops. Owner Jacob Colton can't fit inside, so he had to push it across the dais in the awards drive-by. On the field was a team of Youth Judges, part of a program by Hagerty Insurance to interest young people in old cars. Here 14-year-old Christopher DeMarey, who has been judging at Greenwich for half his life, instructs his team as Saab collector and restorer Bruce Turk explains his car. Crowds were plentiful throughout the day, despite threatening weather. A brief shower delayed prize-giving, but thunderstorms held off until the last winner had driven off the field.

(Text and pictures by Kit Foster)

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