Notes From Pebble Beach

The Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is a visually overwhelming experience. The history of the automobile is laid out on a sprawling lawn that meets sea and sky with equal drama as squadrons of pelicans cruise overhead, and thousands of smartly-dressed enthusiasts navigate a maze of the finest motor cars ever created. (There simply isn’t enough time in the day to give each car the study it deserves, but I tried.) 

This year’s concours observed the centennial of two very different companies. One could say they are on different ends of the design spectrum as well as the alphabet (“B” and “Z”). 

“B” for Bentley: renowned for its massive and powerful luxury touring cars, the company had immediate competition success at its inception as well as a dashing image thanks to a group of wealthy owners who came to be known as “The Bentley Boys”. Most had served in the Great War and all raced their cars with warrior spirit; the marque claimed four consecutive LeMans victories from 1927-1930. 

It wasn’t easy, however. Walter Owen Bentley was financially on the ropes by 1925 but had luckily captured the imagination of Woolf Barnato. He was the heir to a South African diamond fortune and had served as an artillery officer in Gaza and Jordan. Barnato’s father was a former London shopkeeper who sought and found his fortune in the diamond trade but had gone overboard during an overseas crossing when his son was just two years old. Woolf Jr.’s inheritance preserved Bentley for a glorious few years until the Great Depression finally forced it into receivership. Rolls-Royce finally bought the company, taking it in new directions, but the romance and athletic prowess of the Pre-Rolls era has always been Bentley’s greatest legacy. Rolls-Royce preserved that ethos in casting Bentley in a premier sports-luxury touring role.

“Z” for Zagato: having learned about lightweight materials, strength-to-weight ratio and streamlined shapes during stints in both coachbuilding and aeroplane construction, Ugo Zagato founded his carrozzeria in Milan. In a classic case of “right place, right time”, the fledgling operation attracted some business from Alfa Romeo and soon Ugo had won the confidence of Alfa’s Chief Engineer, Vittorio Jano, the Hungarian-born genius who had just recently joined the company. The two were men were both in their early twenties and shared great ambition.

Their relationship would prove to be a lifelong triumph of design collaboration, first under the Alfa nameplate, later at Lancia, and across many other great marques both in Italy and beyond. The distinctive Zagato style- light and lithe, yet with bold aggressive tension and an avant-garde defiance- can be polarizing, but never boring.  

Zagato wasn’t immune to hardship; the company survived a bombing raid in 1943 and tough economic times in the seventies, but Ugo retained family ownership of his carrozzeria which truly became a family affair and continues today under Andrea Zagato, Ugo’s grandson. 

Incidentally, 2019 marks more or less the end of great marque centennials; by the 1920s, far more car companies were at the end of the road than the beginning. Thankfully, Bentley and Zagato managed to survive and thrive. 

And this year’s Best of Show? A 1931 Bentley Bentley 8-Litre Sports Tourer with bodywork by Gurney Nutting, owned by the Honorable Sir Michael Kadoorie, Chairman of The Peninsula Hotels and scion of a wildly successful Hong Kong family.

It is fitting that this car won: it represents the last model overseen by W.O. Bentley... and his last bid to save the company. The eight-litre straight six was capable of 100 miles per hour. W.O. Bentley was an advocate of displacement rather than forced induction, and was opposed to supercharging, thinking it made his engines less reliable. He was proven right, and although the 4 ? litre “blower” Bentleys favored by Woolf Barnato are remarkable, they are not as W.O. intended. Ironically, the eight litre engine was what may have ultimately saved the Bentley nameplate, since Rolls-Royce purportedly acquired the company to deny acquisition of that engine to any rival.

There were many other cars at Pebble to tell you about this year, but as I said at the outset, it is impossible to give each its due. Walk the lawn yourself some time and you will see.