Once a year the city of Cernobbio is all about the historic Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este. Since 1929, this event takes place every year and it brings together the crème de la crème in the automotive world. This year, we were present ourselves and this beautiful event is something we will never forget. With this report we want to show you how amazing this event really is !
Every year thousands of car events are organized but there’s no event that can compete with the prestigious Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este. Everything about this event is perfect. The location, the setting, the cars, the people. This is already a very impressive event when you see the photos but its gets even better when you’re visiting the event in the beautiful gardens of the Grand Hotel Villa d’Este and Villa Erba yourself. We traveled to Villa d’Este in a Rolls-Royce Wraith which we picked up in Munich.
The concourse consists a few parts almost all of them feature a lot of historical cars. From 14:30 to 17:30 the Grand Parade takes place where the participating cars are shown and discussed. We will show you another photo report of the Grand Parade later. Villa d’Este is also a place where important concept cars are shown. BMW showed the beautiful 3.0 CSL Hommage while Bentley, Lamborghini, Zagato and Aston Martin were also present with new models. At Villa d’Este you can take a closer look at the cars in all ease. Next to Villa d’Este is Villa d’Erbe which is all about the RM Auction in Saturday evening. All four Ferrari supercars were auctioned, the 288 GTO, F40, F50 and EnzoFerrari. Other great cars were a Lamborghini Miura, 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS 2.7 Sport Lightweight which found a new owner for a price of over 1 million euros but the real highlight was the Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Spider by Scaglietti which had to raise at least 11 million euros but couldn’t get a higher price than 10.25 million euros.
Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este is not all about the value of the cars. It are timeless designs and the history that make it interesting to dive into the stories of these classics. This is way more than the modern LaFerrari or Porsche 911 GT3 RS. Visitors are enjoying the most beautiful products of the automotive world. Between these visitors we’ve seen singer James Blunt and actor Orlando Bloom. We’ve also seen a lot of famous people in the automotive world like Lapo Elkann, Torsten Müller-Ötvös, Evert Louwman and legend Valentino Balboni. Especially Balboni ended the Saturday on a legendary way because he still loves his ‘own’ Lamborghini Countach so much. It are the rare moments that make Villa d’Este so special.
We will still follow with an extensive photo report of all the historic cars. This year the classes on the event were Flamboyance in motion, Antidepressants, Phantom Story, Made to measure, Gentlemens Racers, Hollywood on the Lake, GT Man has arrived, How fast is fast enough and Two seats against the stopwatch. Next to that we will also highlight the Rolls-Royce Wraith that we’ve tested during this weekend.
Photos by Adam van Noort .
