Palm Beach, 19th and 20th of January
Over the last 20 years the Cavallino Classic extended from the
Concours to a six day event. Starting with two private Track Days
on Tuesday, Wednesday is the first day of the registration at the
Breakers with a small welcome reception in the evening.
The first interesting day for visitors is Thursday with the official
Track Days at the Palm Beach International Raceway and the
Grand Driving Tour that ends in the late afternoon at the Jet
Aviation at the PB International Airport.
Beside the sportive aspect and the Concours the supporting
programme became more and more important over the years.
This includes the social part of the car week with the Jet Center
Reception on Thursday and the Yacht Hop at the Rybovich Yacht
Club on Friday. Both owners and guests can come together in a
very relaxed atmosphere talking about cars, planes and yachts
and enjoy a cocktail on a mild January evening in Florida. A
welcome side effect is to bring together the latest private jets and
some exhibited yachts with their possible prospective owners.
On both days a small number of Ferrari were parked alongside
the planes and boats to introduce some of the visitors not that
familiar with the earlier history of the marque to the classic car
world. As the reception guests were asked to vote for their
favourite exhibit not few of them took a closer look at the cars and
asked many questions.
The People´s Choice Award on the first day went to the Ferrari
166 MM/53 Vignale Spyder (s/n 0314M) that was brought over
from the UK by Jeremy and James Cottingham of DK
Engineering. With its attractive two-tone paint the small car was
especially admired by the ladies. Further cars of interest were the
very original 375 MM Pinin Farina Spyder and the 340 Mexico.
The Aston Martin DB5 Convertible in very rare Vantage
configuration was a foretaste on the multi-marque Concours at
Mar-a-Lago on Sunday that featured the British marque.
The second People´s Choice Award the following day at the
Yacht Hop went also to a car that was flown in from Europe, the
highly original 375 MM Pinin Farina Spyder (s/n 0382AM) that
was also theme of a lecture series on preservation and restoration
the day before. With lots of patina even less educated visitors
knew that this is a remarkable car and most of the time a cluster
of people was surrounding the racer.
The awards were presented by John W.Barnes, publisher of the
Cavallino Magazine on the deck of the yacht Mustang Sally
together with the trophies for the races during the track days.
But not just cars were awarded as the yacht KingFisher was
named BoS by public choice as well.
After the 2 receptions the Concours Saturday was reserved for the
awards dinner at the Breakers before the week ended with the
Concours at Mar-a-Lago.
Text&images: Peter Singhof
www.ClassicCarPhotography.de
<http://www.ClassicCarPhotography.de/>
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