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I've been watching some YouTube videos and looking at websites pertaining to Concours d'Elegance Invitationals and/or manufacturer themed shows. I notice all these high end works of art coming from across the country and being invited to do so. The cheapskate in me can't help but ask- who pays the transport for cars coming from across country? The car owner or the show producer?

Car owner. I've NEVER been offered transport to bring my car to a show.

I would imagine that if you have the money for a six-figure classic car, you most likely have the money to transport it once or twice a year. Not that that is cheap though.

When you factor in those costs as well as the other carrying costs like building garages, buying truck and trailer, and maintaining all that stuff, those cars are a pretty rotten investment unless they were bought in 1960.

But I actually do not understand that scene. Some of it is like one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's worst nightmares. On the other hand those shows attract a lot of spectators the owners have a low regard for. So why even be there? It's not like throwing a party at a 5th Avenue duplex apartment where rich people get together and arrange insider trading deals in the stock market.

Right. And nothing but nothing's queered this hobby more than the Pebble Beach/Amelia Island mentality; a few overblown, overhyped, overrated cars in their day, improving since only in recounted mythology.

Such shows need a certain number of entrants as field fodder, so the trophies exchanged among the inner circle of arbitragers, real estate developers mean something.

A late friend's Delahaye took Best of Show at 2000's Bauble Beach. A down to earth Basque, he had his cars restored at a shop down in the Central CA ag valley to make it affordable, beautiful of course, but admitted if you want to split hairs, better craftsmanship (if not taste) at the Oakland Roadster Show.

Many shows do raise money for certain laudable charities, but we've yet to see their books, an audit; gauge their overhead, how much of the gate really goes to "the children," "our troops," disease du jour, et al.

Stranger is the proclivity of the little people to think hanging out with, oohing and ahhing over the aforementioned and their current toy somehow rubs off on them, even as the very folk most shafted by rich, flag-waving pols feverishly glom.

These janitorial non-elegances have nothing to do with the real events in Europe in the '20s, '30s, where cars were judged strictly on line, form, presence, the owner's wife or paramour sometimes wearing a suitable dress or gown, the cars often driven through rain the night before, parked on the hotel's grounds still with a bit of mud in the tire treads.

Phil Hill, whose '31 Pierce won 1955's Pebble, later ran a restoration shop in Santa Monica, said he'd seen "more nice original cars forever ruined for the sake of a few more points at some concours."

There was no Pebble in 2020 due to Covid. 2019 was won by a Chinese billionaire, 2021's by a billionaire US flag patriot, as War II combat vets, fathers of the modern war novel Kurt Vonnegut, Normal Mailer, Gore Vidal called such, supplying the auto industry with upholstery produced entirely in Mexico.

A friend years ago watched a tie betwixt a pair of Pebble entrants broken when the judges finally pulled their dipsticks and awarded the cleaner. Yes, really.
He also heard contestants at Pebble citing how they only gave their white elephants ring and valve jobs, not engine rebuilds, for fear of losing their factory idle.

It might be interesting to deduct points depending on how odious the source of the exhibitor's wherewithal.
Does he, as one billionaire Ferrarist in the Bay Area, try to pave 30 pristine acres of avian and wildlife habitat, remove 400 trees, for a vanity "senior community" for the one half of the one percent?

The same mentality dominates the CCCA, for so long most car buffs can't recall not being in second-tier obeyance. Automotive Stockholm Syndrome.

What are we really fawning over?
We all know stunning old cars, Packards and others, that run as intended, that rarely if ever appear at such events.

Most of us stopped exhibiting --no trophy chasing -- as shows charging entrants fees (Hillsborough never did) went over $20. You don't charge the players at a ballgame.

People whose egos rely on, and net worth includes, shiny old cars will quickly sputter how much it costs to put on such demolition derbies, janitorial d'nonelegance.

Cars and coffees have replaced most shows of cars trailered like so many beached whale carcasses, remaining concours d'credit line retain PR consultants, planting the usual articles in buff magazines.

Packard was once the quiet leader of the auto industry. Packard Info couldn't be a finer, more suitable site. Perhaps we can do our part to reclaim this hobby.

Sure seems like a lot of unnecessary bitterness. Some don't like the big-name, big-buck shows like Pebble Beach. Others clearly do. We are all entitled to our own opinions - but that's all they are.

I'm not bitter. I just don't go there. A long time ago I was at a party and talking this old money dowager. We both knew Bob Turnquist (Turnquist is an old New York name). She says incredulously: "Isn't he the one with the old cars?" as if he was the millionaire who wears clothes from Goodwill. As far as she was concerned old cars have no darn class.

If you like the cars like Bob did that's great. I knew old timers who never went to a car show because they just liked the car. I've outlived so many of those people I know I'm not taking anything with me.

I guess Trump would call me a loser, but I'll kick his ass in the hundred yard dash.

There is another thing. Today I was testing the compression in my modern car by running at 100 mph and checking if there was still a lot of pedal reserve. I wasn't really gaining on the car in front of me. As far as driving those old things I don't feel safe today. Back during the Nixon 55 mph speed limit you could manage 45-50 in a 1930 Packard.

And nobody but nobody used the term "classic" for cars until LA car buff lawyer Robert Gottlieb coined it in his Motor Trend columns beginning 1951 for the outsized white elephants available for a song on any city's used car lots' backrow because no one wanted them, and there was no source for tires.

The CCCA was begun the next year by a few NYC, CT execs in their 20s, 30s, inc. rich kids like Bob Turnquist, who adopted the term; their accepted list comically arbitrary. The paucity of sporting cars underscores size is as much attribute in their eyes.

Car mad kids in the late '30s and '40s called such fare "fine cars." In 1972, a Duesenberg first owned by Greta Garbo became the first car to approach $100,000 at auction. Suddenly, "classic" Coke, pizza, everything barely out of the Kelley Blue Book. The Korean War generation wanted their day in the fiscal sun, so we quickly had "classic" Tri-Chevs, T-Birds. Then the boomers wanted their egos stroked so "muscle cars" became "classic.

To the fellow suggesting "bitterness." The word you're casting for is disgust. May i suggest you reread what Mr. Cole and i wrote.

Like Tim, those of us who've been fooling with old cars most our lives simply miss this hobby before it was buggered by the idle rich.

Miss the likes of Hemmings Motor News/Special Interest Autos/Small Boat publisher formerly with the NY Times Review of Books, Terry Ehrich, an arborist, environmentalist who liked old cars. Michael Lamm,
no better auto historian extant, started SIA specifically to cover all interesting old cars, not just the "fire trucks," as longtime Packard Club quarterly editor Dick Langworth well summed the oft overrated dreadnaughts of the '30s.

Listen to Tim. However many i've driven, he's driven more, and worked on.

Something nice about burbling along at 45-50 in any old car, even one newer than 1930. Thanks to the Pebble/Amelia's breathless reportage, the first question most of us are asked is the immensely rude "what's sumpin' like that worth?," as if the answer imbues instant understanding of the complexities, hows, whys of an ancient example of industrial art.

Before corporate journalism infected Road & Track, Phil Frank and Joe Troise (whose father was a Packard national service manager) did a wonderful cartoon, Nigel Shiftright. In one, Nigel's pottering along in his trusty MG-TC when some yuppies in an enormous SUV blow by him yelling
"You're impeding our lifestyle!"

Since before Roman times;
De gustibus non est disputandum, or de gustibus non disputandum est, is a Latin maxim meaning "In matters of taste, there can be no disputes"

The money part has been a two sided situation. It caused a lot of cars to be preserved. It also caused a lot of cars to be cut up to create convertibles. A wonderful story is how the Duesenberg limousine used in all those Hollywood movies was resurrected after some nut used the chassis to make a Torpedo Phaeton replica that looks like crap.

I didn't do well in the corporate world because I'm not much of a sycophant, although I do take pleasure in the fact that some of my work was boosted and used at other companies without problems because if my former employer pursued the matter that would be admission that throwing me out was a stupid idea. The sad part is the people losing all the money were promoted and getting paid more than ever. To quote Dick Slobidean : that's not my deal.

Knocking the CCCA founding principles misses an important issue. When that club was started an old Ford, Plymouth, or Chevy sold for more than the same year Packard. There are cases where someone like Joe Fass would see a car in a scrapper's line and be told "I can get $25 dollars for this radiator alone". He would say "I'll buy the whole thing for that and save you the work." And he'd drive the car away.

I've known people involved in those cars that are off by themselves because dealing with those fat cats caused a lot of emotional distress. I'd rather have my sanity. As well, I have never understood how Washington has been able to finance our bankrupt government so the money is something that can disappear very quickly. And losing a fortune is a lot more painful than not having it at all. I call that emotional risk management.