Amelia Island

Over the past two decades the concours d’élégance at Amelia Island, the glitzy golf ’n’ beach resort in northern Florida, has grown to rival Pebble Beach, and now attracts more than 300 of the rarest and most stunning collector cars in the world. Each year it also honours a great motor sport figure, and this time it was the turn of Hans Stuck. On the concours field were 18 cars he campaigned during his long career, from baby BMW 700S via F1 Brabham-Alfa and Shadow to
Le Mans-winning Porsche 962C. 

At the gala dinner the night before Stuck, in hilarious form, was interviewed on stage by former team-mate Derek Bell, and he was on the field to help present Best of Show awards to Jack Nethercutt’s superb Brewster-bodied Rolls Phantom II sedanca de ville and Evert Louwman’s unique Pegaso Cupula coupé.

Pegaso had a class of its own, displaying no fewer than 14 of these ultra-rare Spanish 1950s supercars. Other intriguing categories covered wild concept cars of the 1950s, the massive John Greenwood racing Corvettes, and early Porsches, from the very beginning of the marque up to a Beuttler four-seater 356A. A special class displayed some of motor racing’s most iconic trophies and 11 of the cars that earned them, including the Ferraris that won Le Mans in 1949 and 1965, the Vanderbilt Cup-winning 11-litre ALCO from 1909, and the Watson-Offenhauser that triumphed in the 1958 ‘Monzanapolis’ Race of Two Worlds, which took the class. Simon Taylor