Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este

Lake Como, Italy 25-27 May

THE WARM-UP SESSION started quite early in the morning. A silent scene of welldressed guests sipping their coffees while overlooking the water just below the terrace, surrounded by confident ducks hoping for a piece of cornetto, evaporated the moment the 1982 Alfa Romeo 182 F1 started its 12-cylinder engine. The crescendo of music echoed among the antique buildings and along the shore, followed by the Cosworth voice of a 1977 Tyrrell P34 and then others.

This was not Monte Carlo during the days of the F1 Grand Prix, but the usually calmer Cernobbio, on the shore of Lake Como in Italy, and its annual Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este. For the first time since the event started in 1929, the Concorso had a full class dedicated to Formula 1 from a period when, to quote Sir Stirling Moss, ‘sex was safe and racing dangerous’.

The engines’ soundtracks erupted as cars were prepared for the parade on the hotel’s gravel-covered terrace. ‘It was not so difficult,’ said former Formula 1 racing driver Pierluigi Martini as he climbed out of his six-wheeled Tyrrell P34, ‘but I had to focus to avoid wheelspin, while trying to keep enough speed to float on the thick gravel and prevent the front wing acting as a snowplough. Even if we raise the car to the maximum possible height, we are still really low.’

Winner of the Coppa d’Oro, the historic trophy awarded after the hotel guests’ votes on the Saturday, was the 1968 Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale chassis 75033*110, designed by Franco Scaglione. Only 18 examples were built, of which ten are thought to survive.

‘It is totally preserved and original,’ says Swiss collector Albert Spiess, ‘and as far as we know it’s the only one surviving in this unmolested condition. It was owned for decades by Palumbo, an Alfa Romeo dealer near Rome, and it has covered around 700km from new.’ The 33 also won the BMW Italy trophy for the most-voted-for car of Sunday, the public day.

Best-in-show, picked by a team of judges captained by designer Lorenzo Ramaciotti and awarded the BMW Group Trophy, went to a 1958 Ferrari 335 S. It’s the last of four built, of which three are known to survive. ‘It was sold new in the US, was raced a lot and lived a hard life,’ said Austrian collector Andreas Möhringer. ‘Restorer Paul Russell has returned it to antique magnificence.’

The car nearly had to receive its trophy at the car pound in Como, after an over-zealous policeman decided the lack of numberplates should prevent the car driving, as the others did, on the few hundred metres of open road to the hotel for the prizegiving. Ah, Italy…

Clockwise from below Experts judged Ferrari 335 S to be best-in-show; Tyrrell P34 shattered the peace; Alfa 33 Stradale scooped the popular vote.