Palm Beach, 28th of January, 2018

Cavallino Classic 27 is history. Once again a memorable edition of the Ferrari event organized by the Cavallino Magazine came to an end at early Sunday afternoon in the gardens of the Mar-a-Lago beach club. One year after President Trump taking the highest position in the US Cavallino again got permission to hold their Sunday lunch at the ballroom of what was nicknamed “White House South”. The estate formerly owned by Marjorie Merriweather Post the landmark building serves as the perfect background of the multi-marque event and social highlight of the weekend. Fortunately the weather forecast of the recent days did not proof right as unlike the previous year the Sunday meeting could be held in nice sunshine rather than in the expected rain.

Early in the morning the cars entered the lawn with a special feature of the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing and Roadster set up prominently at the pool area where the aperitif was served. Unlike the day before the cars did not seem to be in the center of the interest as the main attention was on the social part of the reception rather than looking at the cars. Once the lunch was served the field finally emptied and only a few club members took the chance of the free attraction after their Sunday morning brunch to look at the treasures lined up in the Florida sun. As in the years before the side of the pool was reserved for the pre-war cars featuring an interesting mix of Duesenberg and Packard on the American side as well as a vintage Bentley, a Lagonda and a nice Mercedes-Benz 540K Cabriolet A on the European side.

As mentioned before the main feature was the marque from Sindelfingen with the iconic 300 SL both in Gullwing form and the later Roadster with enough examples for one (if not the) leading specialist Paul Russell to point out the differences in the model years and the quality of the restoration.
Furthermore a few limousines and cabriolets from the 300 series could be seen as well as a small mix of British cars from Jaguar and Rolls-Royce.

With many Ferrari in town for the Breakers concours several of yesterdays displayed cars could be seen again and the line-up gave some extra photo opportunity like the 212 Export Vignale Spyder and Berlinetta close to each other giving a nice comparison of the pure lines of both cars. The similarities were certainly underlined by the very similar color two-tone scheme.

Also next to each other were the two Touring Barchetta, an early 166 MM and yesterday’s competition class winning 212 showing the development of the design and especially the back of the cars.

After a long lunch and award ceremony in the ballroom the happy owners went back to their cars with a lot of silverware and in typical American fashion the field cleared quit fast as some of them most likely flew out the very same day to be back in office the next day. This leaves the restorers and caretakers of the cars in charge to load them and ship them in all directions before some of them might make it to the next Concours at Amelia Island for another appearance at the Concours circuit. Others only had their shake down as a final rehearsal before making their big appearance at Pebble Beach later that year as the judging of the FCA seems to be a good test of what has to be done prior the most prestigious concours to be in consideration for one of the awards over there.

We finalize our daily report of this year’s Cavallino Classic for today coming back with more detailed galleries of all the days in near future rounding of a great week in the sun.

Report & Images ... Peter Singhof
www.ClassicCarPhotography.de