Lime Rock Concours Will Mark Two Big Automotive Anniversaries

It's almost that time of year again—the time to plan your entire Labor Day weekend around the Lime Rock Historic Festival.

The northwest Connecticut circuit hosts a whole weekend of events, with several days of vintage racing bookending the Sunday in the Park Concours and Gathering of the Marques, with hundreds of cars lining the track.

The Historic Festival will kick off with a free movie night at the Colonial Theatre in North Canaan, Connecticut, on Aug. 29 at 8 pm with a screening of Rush (2013), which we discovered (to our horror) is now over a decade old after crunching some numbers.

The film follows the rivalry between Niki Lauda and James Hunt during the 1976 F1 season, and we also tend to credit it with kicking off the current, slow-moving wave of racing films and miniseries, with Senna set to debut later this year.

"The movie night at the Colonial Theatre is just one of the many activities planned to commemorate this year’s festival, which promises to be a memorable weekend filled with vintage cars, historic races, and family-friendly events," said Lime Rock Park Chief Marketing Officer Jamie Kistner.

Thursday, August 29, will also see the Historic Festival Parade—a 17-mile tour through the local towns where cell reception is far from guaranteed—that will wrap up with a street fair in Falls Village.

The Sunday, Sept. 1 concours itself will mark the 60th anniversary of the Ford Mustang, with collector Ross Myers bringing a number of significant Ford-powered sports cars, racers, and hot rods from the 3 Dog Garage Museum in Boyertown, Pennsylvania.

As you've guessed by now, there will be quite a few Ford classes at the concours this year, spanning historic Ford GTs to a class dubbed "Found On Road Daily" that will feature everything from barn finds to restomods and project cars.

In fact, a total of nine Ford-focused classes will be on display, including Ford Shelby Mustangs, Classic Ford Pickups, Prewar Ford Hot Rods, AC Cobras, Ford GTs, and a few others. Ford is the featured marque this year.

One other model will be celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, and you just may have heard of it.

It hails from West Germany and is called the Porsche 911. And it has traditionally carried its engine in its small trunk, where we usually put our golf clubs and 60-gallon drums of Tide detergent from Costco. (A drawback when it comes to cargo capacity, if you ask us).

This obscure machine, which is a little too easy to confuse with the Porsche 912 from afar, is sure to be in attendance when it comes to every generation, even The Old Ones.

And we're even old enough to remember when we could afford a used 993. (It's okay—we're not upset, we're not upset. We're fine).

Keen students of automotive history will point out that the Porsche 911 was actually revealed in September 1963 at the IAA in Frankfurt, and the automaker itself considers the 1963 launch year to be the big year. Full production began in September 1964.

But, like Alex Trebek, we'll go ahead and say that our judges will accept 1963 or 1964.

"Adding to the excitement, a new class debuts this year: Contemporary Coachbuilding, where the artistry of current coachbuilders will be displayed on both classic and modern chassis," the event's organizers add.

Additional classes will include Early Sports Cars: Raceabouts and Runabouts, and Under Pressure: Turbocharged and Supercharged Cars.

Even if you don't own a Porsche 911, odds are you will still be able to drive something classic to the Gathering of the Marques during Sunday's concours, with hundreds of cars set to line the track. And we use the term "classic" here very loosely, not at all in the Pebble Beach sense.

In all, the Sunday Concours and the Gathering of the Marques alone should see about 1,000 cars lined up around the circuit. And some might be... not what you'd expect.

Last time we attended Lime Rock Concours, we drove a white Peugeot 505 station wagon and displayed it along with about 30 other French cars at the top of the hill, sitting next to a Citroen CX ambulance.

Yes, we had a solid lock on the Peugeot 505 Station Wagon Class, helped to some degree by the fact that we also had the only Peugeot 505 there. We also cannot rule out the possibility that we had shown the only Peugeot 505 wagon in the event's entire history, surely deserving a trophy if we're being honest here. It can be mailed to us at Lime Rock's convenience.

A few years prior to our showcase of an extremely original Peugeot 505 station wagon, we went for a spin around Lime Rock in the late collector Walter Miller's 1964 Nissan Cedric that was rescued from a field in Pennsylvania just weeks prior, and which also celebrates its 60th anniversary this year now that we think about it.

Visit the event website for the full schedule and ticket information.