Amelia Island – RM Auction and Concours, March 12-13th, 2006

I set off at Sparrow’s fart on Saturday morning to go look at the annual Amelia Island Concours on Sunday, now in its eleventh year and to take in the RM Auction, held the day before at the Ritz Carlton. I had some cars to bid on for customers, so wanted to get there early to take a close look at some of them.

The auction was VERY well attended, every seat in the marquee being taken and a horde of people standing at the sides and back to watch the cars come through on this one day only auction.

Judging by the prices paid, it was a very successful auction, a 1961 Ferrari 250 Berlinetta, (aluminum bodied) selling for $2.65M and a Ford Mustang 350 GTR going for almost $1M.

Sunday morning saw me at the Concours bright and early. It was held on the Ritz Carlton’s Golf Course and a delectable assortment of cars were on display, including a class devoted to Porsche 935s. There was also a display of Can Am cars, which included the old Dan Gurney driven Lola T70 from 1966 and the Mark Donohue driven T70 Mark 3b Spyder from 1967. A McLaren M6 and an M20, Porsches 917/10 and /30 and the Shadow Can Am car were also there.

Johnny Rutherford was the invited star of the show and he was there with several of the Indy Racecars he’d driven in his career. (See photo below.)

Personally, I dislike racecars at Concours d’Elegance, seeing them as being taken completely out of context. For me, they belong at a vintage race meeting but readers of this web page probably already appreciate that I have very firm views on Concours d’Elegance!

No matter, the organizer(s) of the Concours did a magnificent job and I’m quite sure the great majority of the vast crowd who attended the Concours had a memorable, enjoyable day. Having taken a look around and taken the photos you see here, I was out of the event by 10 a.m. and back home by 2 p.m., in time to watch the (repeated) Grand Prix of Bahrain in which Michael Schumacher chased Fernando Alonzo to the flag, with Kimi Raikonnen finishing third after starting from the back of the grid. This shows that:

1: Alonzo is a faster driver than Schumacher.

2: Ferrari have recovered their form, having stumbled (probably over their Bridgestone tires) badly last year and…

3: Raikonnen is probably faster than both of them!