Beaters Rejoice! Unrestored Car Wins Pebble!

• For the first time in history a Preservation Class car, AKA an unrestored barn-find, has won Best of Show at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance.

• The 1934 Bugatti Type 59 Sports once owned by King Leopold of Belgium.

• This is huge! HUGE!

Check your horoscope, by a lottery ticket, look for sunspots, because for the first time since the invention of the automobile an unrestored car has just won Best of Show at Pebble.

No, this is not April 1.

A 1934 Bugatti Type 59 Sports once owned by King Leopold of Belgium, something of a gentleman racer, and a car supposedly raced by unspecified legends of motorsports, according to Pebble Beach organizers, has driven off with the Crystal Trophee. It proudly carried its many battle scars earned through a life well-lived.

“This storied Bugatti, the first Type 59 built, is a rare factory race car that recorded multiple Grand Prix victories at the hands of several important racing greats—and it also has ties to royalty,” said Concours Chairman Sandra Button.

“Perhaps most importantly, it wears all of its history to this day, having been preserved in the livery it was given when redressed by King Leopold of Belgium.”

Almost every Best of Show winner before it has been a multi-million-dollar restoration, searched for tediously, its history recreated by little men with reading glasses peering over dusty ancient texts, then sent to far-off resto shops somewhere for at least two years of hammering, grinding, and sliding back and forth through an English wheel, before rolling in near-hermetically sealed opulence onto the lawn at Pebble to try and beat the other billionaire-built entries.

This car had none of that. It carried with it onto the lawn at Pebble, as Paul Simon said,

“..the reminders
Of every glove that laid it down
Or cut it till it cried out
In its anger and its shame
‘I am leaving, I am leaving’
But the fighter still remains…”

And remain it did, no shame here, just the world’s greatest barn find.

“I’m so happy for the car, so happy for Bugatti,” said owner Fritz Burkard of The Pearl Collection in Zug, Switzerland. “This car is incredible. It’s so much history—one of the most successful Bugattis in history—and to win with this car means a lot to me. First time a Swiss, first time a European wins, first time a preservation wins. It’s important that preservation also gets recognition, because a car can only be once original. And it drives so beautifully.”

Preservation cars have parked on the concours field for decades, and the concours has hosted formal classes for them since 2001. But no one, NO ONE, thought an unrestored barn-find would ever win. Well read ‘em an’ weep, suckahs!

There was even a weird distinctively shaped car in the runner-up category, though a cool one: Phillip Sarofim’s 1970 Lancia Stratos HF Zero Bertone Coupe, which was presented by Meyers Manx company owner Sarofim as part of the wild Wedge category of concepts and prototypes.

Before you jump in your private SpaceX Starship and depart for Mars because the world you thought you knew has gone completely insane, take solace, traditionalists, in the knowledge that the other two runners up were more typically Pebble: the 1948 Talbot-Lago T26 Grand Sport Saoutchik Fastback Coupé from the Paris Auto Show of that year presented by Robert Kudela of Chropyně in the Czech Republic (Kudela was a former runnerup with “The Zipper Car” a few years ago); and the 1934 Packard 1108 Twelve LeBaron Sport Phaeton of former BOS winner (with a semi-wild-looking yellow Duesenberg) Harry Yeaggy.

The more or less “traditional concours” classes still made up the vast majority of the show: American Classic Open, American Classic Closed, European Classic Sport, European Classic Touring, Duesenberg, Packard, etc. etc.

But an unrestored car winning Pebble? This may take a few weeks, or months to sink in and digest. Who knows what’s possible now? Will dogs marry cats? Will people finally realize golf is dumb? Will the Concours d’Lemons be taken seriously?

Anything’s possible. Can’t wait for next year.

Is this the end of the world? Let us know in the comments.