The Best of Show winner, a deep blue 1937 Delahaye 135M Roadster Convertible, pulled up the horseshoe driveway and passed the judges’ grandstand to fanfare typical of a vintage car expo.
Such a carefully restored and elegant car was to be expected at a classic car show. The venue, however, was anything but typical: the Concours d’Elegance was first held at the Detroit Institute of Arts, a Beaux-Arts museum in the heart of America’s Motor City.
“As remarkable as it may seem, there has never been an auto show of this caliber in the city of Detroit,” said Richard Vaughan, a veteran auto designer who is part of the consulting team for the event, which took place Sept. 27. 18. “We strongly believed that an event celebrating the automobile should take place in the city of Detroit, the city that put the world on wheels.”
Events like the Concours d’Elegance, which showcases classic cars from the first half of the 20th century, usually take place at luxury resorts like Pebble Beach on California’s Monterey Peninsula or Villa d’Este on the shores of Lake Como in Italy . By holding the event in Detroit, the organizers sought to celebrate the city’s automotive history.
It was also an effort to broaden the reach of exhibits like this, which have traditionally targeted high-end collectors and wealthy individuals. In the downtown area, the Detroit Concours organizers were able to remove some of the physical and financial barriers to exclusivity, making it more accessible to residents.
The vehicle categories, known as classes, reflected Detroit’s unique role in the industry. The shared space on the museum’s grounds with sculptures by Alexander Calder, Auguste Rodin, and Tony Smith included 1932 Ford hot rods and one-of-a-kind cars from the famed Autorama show, held regularly in Detroit since the 1950s.
There were also limited edition cars from the three major domestic automakers: Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler (now part of the global Stellantis group). There were even rare muscle cars, the kind that may have once burned rubber on Woodward Avenue, the road outside the museum, and a thoroughfare long associated with cruising and street racing.
“When you look at our top of the line classes, it’s mostly about celebrating Detroit,” said Soon Hagerty, senior vice president of brand strategy for Hagerty, the publicly traded classic car insurance company. The company recently purchased the rights to the Detroit Concours and many others like it across the country, with the goal of preserving and elevating it for the next generation.
“For us, it’s really about what the guests want to see?” said Mrs. Hagerty. “And here they want to see the cars that make Detroit special.”
Home to a significant collection of vintage cars in nearby Dearborn, Michigan, the Henry Ford Museum displayed his radical 1962 Ford Mustang I, a sports car concept that bears little resemblance to the production car it would give its name to a few years later.
“We think of it as a kind of event in our hometown,” said Matt Anderson, the transportation curator at the Henry Ford Museum.
The weekend was structured to encourage local engagement across a wide range of audiences and automotive interests.
On Saturday, a Cars & Community event in the parking lot of Comerica Park, home of the Detroit Tigers, featured two additional exhibits designed primarily to attract younger people.
On one side of the lot was the Concours d’Lemons, which draws models like the AMC Gremlin, the Ford Pinto, the Chevrolet Vega, and other eccentric vehicles produced primarily during the nadir of the US auto industry in the 1970s and early eighties. On the other was an exhibition sponsored by RADwood, a Hagerty events brand, of 1980s and 1990s vehicles, many of which have skyrocketed in value in recent years as they are prized by emerging collectors.
Nearby, hundreds of children, many a decade before they were old enough to get a driver’s license, created their own vanity license plates and key chains, played with toy cars, or had their caricature drawn while sitting in a cherry red convertible.
“This is a much younger crowd,” said Mr. Vaughan. “This is what we want. We want to invite these people into our hobby, give them a place. And they will fall in love with those older cars as time goes on.”
Hobbyists hope the reverse is also true: that older collectors are beginning to recognize the validity of collectibles from more recent decades.
“I always point out that when the Pebble Beach Concours started, the cars they were looking at were only 20 years old,” said Mr. Vaughan.
Hosting a show with over 3,200 in attendance in the middle of Detroit presented its own set of challenges. For example, parking was limited in the densely populated area around the art museum. There were also the questions of where, how and in what order the more than 100 priceless old-timers had to be unloaded, which had to be transported individually in closed tractors with trailers and lined up on the lawn early in the morning before visitors arrived. In addition, organizers had to factor in crowd management on one of Detroit’s busiest avenues while keeping the museum open to the public.
There was also the question of how to integrate the event into the city.
“We could have looked at this one of two ways,” said Mrs. Hagerty. “One is, do we find one central location and do it all there, like on Belle Isle,” she said, referring to a Detroit River park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. “Or let’s see this beautiful city?”
The organizers chose the latter. They hosted an opening event at Beacon Park in the revitalized center. A panel discussion and dinner were held at the historic Argonaut Building, an early GM research and design office now known as the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Design Education, part of the city’s College for Creative Studies. The organizers also coordinated ride-and-drive events in various 1960s cars — a Ford Bronco proto-SUV, a Lincoln Continental convertible, a Pontiac GTO muscle coupe — up and down Woodward Avenue, putting attendees in the thick of the action. came to stand.
In addition to showcasing the host city, the organizers sought to represent a wide range of local car enthusiasts.
The weekend’s festivities centered around a pair of intriguing local automotive subcultures – one focused on custom Japanese compact sports cars and another for contemporary Cadillac performance vehicles. There were also more than a dozen cars from Midwestern brands such as Studebaker and Packard, eclectic and innovative brands that were discontinued in the 1950s and 1960s due to industry consolidation.
Some elements of Detroit automotive culture were notably absent from the events, such as Donks, domestic coupes and sedans with candy-colored paint jobs, bright under-lighting, and oversized and often matching wheels; baroque Cadillacs or Lincolns of the late 20th century, with their modified grilles, headlights, continental tire packs, and hood ornaments of the type made famous in Blaxploitation movies like “The Mack” and “Super Fly”; and lowriders, the hydraulically lowered, small wire wheels, airbrushed and pinstripe staples of countless mostly Latino auto clubs.
The organizers recognized that creating a broader representation of the city’s contemporary automotive culture was a goal for future events.
“Those cars deserve to be celebrated,” said Mr. Vaughan. “You know, this is the first year here. So let’s see how this goes.”
