Amelia Island 2024 fun in the sun (or bring your own umbrella)

    It’s March, it’s cold. Spring will not get here soon enough. I’m not sure about the rest of the country, but Georgia has had its fair share of cold and rain. Florida is calling.

    The Amelia Island concours has been one of my must-go destinations. The auctions, the cars and the weather make this event feel like the Pebble Beach of the east coast.

    Bonhams, Gooding and Broad Arrow displayed their offerings, hoping to find new homes for each and every one of them.

    It appears the Ferrari selections did well, and I believe most of the sold lots were fairly priced with a few exceptional results.

    Selected sales are presented in the following pages for your perusal.

    Amelia is two full days of automotive diversity starting with Saturday Cars & Coffee. The field is filled with interesting cars not lined up in order but parked together in neat rows.

    The fun is discovering little-known or unusual cars within the crowd. Occasionally a Ferrari will be mixed in with a bunch of Porsche, or Nissan, or...

    The fun is in the search. You never know what you might find.

    In another field is Radwood. Radwood is designated as a future classic. Here you will find a modern BMW M3 and Honda NSX mixed in with Nissan GTR.

    It was there I found a 308 GTS QV and a Testarossa. Certainly, those will be future classics, those design lines never seem to age.

 

 

    And then you find something really unusual. It’s a 348 GTS made up to look like a Challenge car. At least until you get close. There I met subscriber Richard Spooner.

    He has taken a 348 body shell and installed a 488 Challenge drivetrain. Shoehorning this package into the back was not as difficult as you might imagine.

    The quality of installation was top notch and as Mr. Spooner pointed out the entire car was all Ferrari. Maybe not all from the same Ferrari, but Ferrari nonetheless!

 

 

    Then on Sunday the field is changed to a whole new level of cars. It is here you will find big, beautiful Brass Era cars with Indy race cars a short walk away. Ferraris are also in abundance.

    The Ferrari 250 Competition Class has an astounding group.

    Yes, there was a GTO. David MacNeil brought his beautiful silver 250 GTO for all to see. There were also four, I said FOUR, 250 GT LWB Berlinetta. It felt like the start of the 1959 Tour de France.

 

 

    Among them was S/N 0703 GT, the ex-John Apen car I spent many a mile driving. It was good to see this old friend.

 

 

    The Ferrari GT class included a 250 Europa, 250 PF Coupe and Cabriolet, a 250 Lusso and one of my all-time favorite 250s, a 250 GT PF Cabriolet Series I in burgundy, a Peter Kalikow car.

 

 

    Scattered about were other gems to be found. A 206 SP brought by Hassan Moghadam from Canada.

 

 

    A white 246 GTS with very special history. This Dino is still with its first owner. He bought it new and decided to drive it from New York to California.

    So, he along with racer Rick Cline did just that in 35 hours and 53 minutes winning the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining Sea Memorial Trophy. Owner Jack May stood near his car with a line of people waiting to hear his story, grinning from ear-to-ear.

    From the title you must be able to guess the weather played a factor in the weekend’s events, and it did. Sort of.

    Friday saw a deluge, but no cars were on the lawn. Saturday threatened all day but aside from some light misting the rain held off, at least until the evening.

    Sunday everywhere was soggy, but the cars were displayed, and all was good until around noon when the rain came down; two hours later it was over.

    The awards were handed out with the cars in place. It was much too soggy to make a trip around the awards stand.

    Best in Show? You guessed it, a 250 GTO!

 

 

A couple of F50s in the Supercar section.