Chantilly, 6th of September, 2015
An action packed classic car weekend came to an end with the
third and final Concours d´Elegance, the second annual Arts &
Elegance of Chantilly. After its sensational debut last year the
concours was back in the park of the 16th century chateau just
about 50 km north-east of Paris. With its spacious site the
location is ideally suited for such an event giving enough room to
have the cars lavishly set up and do not look crowded even when
the amount of visitors clearly increased over last year. With about
100 cars in the Concours and several hundreds more on the club
field the line-up had everything on offer one could expect from an
international event of this caliber. Few other events could look
back on such a prestigious premiere edition when Patrick Peter
and his team brought back the Concours d´Elegance to France
after the end of the Concours in Paris Parc Bagatelle by Louis
Vuitton. But this year one could be curious whether the event
could tie in with last year but to make things short most of the
collectors were back and even more international ones joined in,
especially in the US the beautiful setting seemed to impress as
there were only positive voices from overseas. With an
international jury the competition could also keep up with the
established international concours so there was absolutely no
reason to miss this one.
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As said before about 100 cars competed in 15 different classes
including the featured model, the Citroen DS and the SM. For
those interested in these models Chantilly might have put
together the most compete review of the rare Chapron bodied
special editions one could imagine. Ranging from the elegant
coupé and cabriolet to the spacious Presidentielle the display
was very interesting as was the SM setup.
Further single marque classes included again Bugatti with cars
ranging from the small Brescia models from the beginning of the
Molsheim story to the 4-wheel drive GP car or the luxurious and
sportive Type 57.
Mercedes on the other side of the field presented the story of their
6- and 8-cylinder supercharged cars ranging from the 680S as
designed by Ferdinand Porsche to the 500/540 K both with
factory bodies and coach build examples of Erdmann & Rossi
and even Freestone & Webb as used by the German ambassador
in London. The winner of this group also represented the Best of
Show with the 500K Special Roadster from the Louwman
Museum in Netherlands, the famous butcher’s car.
Other features included the cars of the ladies ranging from a GP
Bugatti once raced by Helle Nice to the BMW 507 of Ursula
Andress of James Bond fame or the Princess of Rethy Ferrari 250
Europa GT with Vignale coachwork that won the Cavallino Classic
Best of Show not long ago.
Further highlights included several Ferrari including the iconic
GTO (4153GT) just brought back to the original livery as used at
the Le Mans in 1963 with French Tricolore before becoming an
Ecurie Francorchamps car. Fresh from restoration was also one
of two Ferrari 250 MM on show (0340MM) brought back to its
original blue color scheme and MM race number as driven in the
1954 edition of the famous road race. As interesting was the other
250 MM (0338MM) intended as road car with Hermès Interior in
the class “cars of the family Aga Khan” whose descendant Rahim
Aga Khan is also member of the Chantilly Foundation today.
But not just the great selection of cars appealed to the numerous
visitors (as one could see that elsewhere as well) but the great
Atmosphere. Being one of few events with a clearly dress code
the overall appearance of both entrants and visitors matches the
luxurious setting, men dressed in suit and tie and the ladies with
Sunday Dress and matching hat usually only seen on horse race
days. With Chantilly not only famous for their art collection but
also the stud farm this was just a logical step.
This is or final preview gallery from the weekend, over the next
days and after the Goodwood Revival that is just around the
corner we will take a closer look back on all of the three events
this weekend including all the interesting cars and some
atmosphere of the three locations.
Text & images: Peter Singhof
www.ClassicCarPhotography.de
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