PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. (November 23, 2024) — At the annual ceremony for the prestigious International Historic Motoring Awards, held in London on Friday night, the 73rd Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance was named the Motoring Event of the Year.
In accepting the award, Concours Chairman Sandra Button recognized the team of 1,200 volunteers who make the event possible, and then she emphasized the importance of the cars themselves: “I’m here to represent the cars,” she said. “We can’t do this without them.”
Sandra went on to talk about the importance of caring for the cars and maintaining their authenticity—particularly as new technologies arise that can so easily change things: “We have to be fair to the cars, the history, the people. I look at the restorers and I think, ‘Please be careful. Please keep these cars real. Authenticity is all we have.’”
She also recognized enthusiasts like Fritz Burkard of Switzerland, “who brings his cars to life with his passion.” Burkard’s 1934 Bugatti Type 59 Sports took the top award at the 2024 Pebble Beach Concours—it was the first preservation car ever to do so—and during the IHMA ceremony, it was named Car of the Year.
One of the Concours’ Best of Show Nominees, a 1948 Talbot-Lago T26 Grand Sport Saoutchik Fastback Coupé owned by Robert Kudela of the Czech Republic, was named the Restoration of the Year. And Bruce Meyer, a longtime Concours advisor, was recognized for Personal Achievement. The awards also recognized many other friends of the Concours.
The International Historic Motoring Awards are offered by the team at Hothouse Media, which publishes Magneto and Octane magazines. The presenting sponsor of this notable occasion was Lockton Insurance Brokers.
IHMA Organizers say the Motoring Event of the Year award goes to “the world’s best motoring event, whether a festival, concours, one-marque gathering, anniversary celebration or other collector car show.” And the Restoration of the Year award is “for the best classic car restoration completed since October 2023.” A panel of judges determine these and many other winners. The Car of the Year award, chosen by an online public vote, goes to “the car — classic or new — that has made the greatest impact on the collector car world this year.”
The 74th Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance will take place on Sunday, August 17, 2025, and will celebrate the centennials of Invicta, Chrysler, and Moretti, the creations of Virgil Exner, the 75th anniversary of Formula 1, and Japanese Concepts & Prototypes—with other features to come. For more information on the Pebble Beach Concours, or to purchase tickets, visit www.pebblebeachconcours.net.
Graphics: International Historic Motoring Awards, with photos from Kimball Studios/Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.
About Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance
First conducted in 1950, Pebble Beach Concours d’ Elegance® (www.pebblebeachconcours.net) has grown to be the world’s premier celebration of the automobile. Only the most beautiful and historic cars are invited to appear on the famed 18th fairway of Pebble Beach Golf Links®, and connoisseurs of art and style gather to admire these masterpieces. Charitable donations raised by Pebble Beach Concours d’ Elegance® now total over $41 million. Related events include Pebble Beach Tour d’ Elegance® presented by Rolex, Pebble Beach RetroAuto™, Pebble Beach Classic Car Forum™ presented by Alliant Private Client, and Pebble Beach® Auctions presented by Gooding & Company. Pebble Beach®, Pebble Beach Golf Links®, Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance®, Pebble Beach Tour d’ Elegance®, Pebble Beach RetroAuto™, Pebble Beach Classic Car Forum™, and Pebble Beach® Automotive Week are trademarks, service marks and trade dress of Pebble Beach Company. All rights reserved. For more information, please call 831-622-1700 or visit pebblebeachconcours.net.
About Pebble Beach Company
Pebble Beach Company, headquartered in Pebble Beach, Calif., owns and operates the world-famous Pebble Beach Resorts®, including The Lodge at Pebble Beach™, The Inn at Spanish Bay™, and Casa Palmero®. The company also operates five renowned golf courses: Pebble Beach Golf Links®, Spyglass Hill® Golf Course, The Links at Spanish Bay™, Del Monte™ Golf Course, and The Hay. Its other famed properties include scenic 17-Mile Drive®, The Spa at Pebble Beach™ and Pebble Beach Golf Academy™. It annually hosts premier events such as the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Pebble Beach Concours d’ Elegance®, Pebble Beach Food & Wine, TaylorMade Pebble Beach Invitational, and the PURE Insurance Championship Impacting The First Tee. Future site of the 2027, 2032, 2037, and 2044 U.S. Open Championships and the 2035, 2040 and 2048 U.S. Women’s Opens, Pebble Beach Golf Links® has hosted six U.S. Opens, five U.S. Amateurs, one PGA Championship, one U.S. Women’s Open and numerous other tournaments. For reservations or more information, please call 800-654-9300 or visit pebblebeach.com.
If the idea of a blog post is to pass along personal history having subject matter that might appeal to others, then here goes.
For me, autumn of 1948 was a pivotal time. I was fifteen and already riding an Ed Iskenderian-tuned 500cc Triumph Tiger, getting about on it, nicely enough, quickly enough, but my father decided I should step up and learn to handle a four-wheeler. The car of choice, his daily driver 1938 Type 57C Bugatti, offered me the first real steering wheel to grasp while comprehending the left-handed shift pattern of that straight-8 drophead French classic. Perceived as totally unearthly, the affair launched my sensibilities into what the outrageous world of cars truly was and, by the second day of October, I was all set to savor the outcome of America’s first post-WWII grand prix race run in anger over a 6.6-mile road course skirting, and slicing through, the hamlet of Watkins Glen, New York. The impression formed was permanent.
Invited 64 years later to speak on sports car racing in America at the Glen’s International Motor Racing Research Center, brought me to meet IMRRC’s president, J.C. Argetsinger, son of Cameron and Jean Argetsinger, founders of the first Watkins Glen Grand Prix and, later, the IMRRC facility. We talked about how it all began.
“Cameron Argetsinger,” J.C. said of his father, “was fascinated with the Roosevelt Speedway before the war when Mercedes and Auto Union came over, and after the war he bought an MG TC and joined the new Sports Car Club of America.” The story goes—during the SCCA members’ dinner at Indianapolis the night before the 1948 “500”, Cameron, a willing enthusiast from New York State, daringly announced he was “going to have a road race next fall” and invited everyone to join his entry list. The nerve of that young visionary! But they did join; not all, yet there were enough drivers and cars signed on to fill that historic grid for Watkins Glen’s inaugural Grand Prix on October 2, 1948.
“I sold programs that first year at age six,” Cameron’s son J.C., now 78, said. “There were ten or fifteen thousand spectators, and our city fathers liked the idea. Next year there were fifty thousand. By 1950 it was colossal.” Watkins Glen’s racing and the later research center grew hand in hand.
The IMRRC’s archives, after years of database streamlining and simplifying, is expediently searchable—punch in a name or date, place or car, it brings up anything out of a collection, and it’s right there. “We’re not a museum, per se,” informed an IMRRC archivist, even though renowned race cars are often displayed there, “and I think that’s important for people to know. It’s about the history of motor racing worldwide. It’s not just about Watkins Glen.”
Bygone beginnings are fascinating for anyone who fancies automotive history, as do I, especially American motor-racing’s golden era. Take, for example, the Italian gem bodied by Carrozzeria Touring that won that very first Watkins Glen race—an Alfa Romeo 8C2900B Berlinetta then owned and driven by Cameron Argetsinger’s colleague, Frank Griswold. Like my father’s Bugatti, Griswold’s Alfa was a straight-8, also built in 1938. Throughout high school, I penciled pictures of the swoopy 8C during study hall. I made it my dream car, even more so than the Bug. Sure, I could hop in and drive our Bugatti, but that Alfa—it was unobtainable! You might even say it only existed for me through shapes clouds made in the sky. And then.
Eleven years ago, on a chilly, damp November day while photographing and writing article notes about a Washington State vintage car shop called Dennison International, proprietor Butch Dennison led me to a bay where they were frame-up restoring a car to have ready for Pebble Beach’s Concours d’Elegance. And there it was!—the exact same Alfa Berlinetta that had won the Glen’s initial race and that had been stuck in my mind for all the decades since!
“Butch,” I gasped, “come August this car is going to win Best of Show!” He laughed, smiled, shaking his head in that fashion of possessing desire but not audacity to be certain. “You’ll see,” I said.
On August 17, 2008, the superbly restored Alfa Romeo 8C2900B was called forward to the Pebble Beach awards ramp where its owners, Jon and Mary Shirley, received the Concours d’Elegance’s Best of Show distinction—the Alfa’s second major historic win of its 70-year car life. I was there and was camera-ready. From a storm of swirling yellow and white confetti appeared the perfect story.
The conservancy of significant cars and keeping of their valued histories are both pursuits and obligations. But more than that, they are what we enjoy doing—and are the spirit of what I have seen grow from 1948 to today as the International Motor Racing Research Center at Watkins Glen, New York.
These narratives to be born from the IMRRC are for everyone caring about what we love.—William Edgar