Pebble Beach Concours, 2024

The 18th fairway at Pebble Beach is probably the most photographed stretch of golf course in the world. On the third Sunday of every August it doesn’t play golf: since 1950 the Concours d’Elegance has set up on this turf, and the world of old cars has no higher stage.

We arrived past noon, and the crowd at the gate had already thinned a little. The manufacturers’ stands were still working hard for attention. Under the Mercedes canopy stood a CLK GTR. Only two dozen or so of these exist in the world, a centerpiece for any museum you could name; here its job was to be the backdrop for foot traffic. I stood and watched for a while and never saw a single person stop. At the time it seemed like a joke. Later it turned out to be the keynote of the day.

The CLK GTR under the Mercedes canopy, people walking past its nose

A kid crouching on the tarmac with a stuffed puppy, a row of auction lots behind

Past the tents the course finally opened up: turf running all the way down to the water, the flags of the different sections standing in for the pins on the greens. The fog parked itself outside Carmel Bay all day and never once came in.

Turf running down to the water, Carmel Bay and a fog bank beyond

The lawns#

The two most comfortable kinds of people on the field: first, the children.

The green 037 remake with the Martini-liveried original behind it

A toddler in blue Crocs walking past a red Ferrari SF90

Second, the owners. The Testarossa people parked their cars in a neat line and then stood behind the tails talking all afternoon. The car is the ticket in; the talking is the point.

The all-red Testarossa interior seen through the side glass

The new cars like to introduce themselves with numbers. Beside the SF90 stood a spec board: 986 horsepower, top speed 211 mph. On a lawn where the speed limit is walking pace, the number gives you the distinct illusion of meaning nothing at all.

The old racers, the ones actually entered, kept quiet. They had all gambled their lives on public roads once; their only assignment now is to sit by the green and take the sun. The sky that day was excessively blue, which made one yellow sixties prototype look excessively yellow.

A yellow 1960s prototype racer under a near-black blue sky

The cockpit of racer number 16, wood steering wheel and two small aero screens

Along the fence#

Picnickers along the white picket fence above the cove

A panorama of Carmel Bay with kelp beds on the water

The entrants count as exhibits themselves. In the prewar section a lady in head-to-toe bright yellow sat on the running board of her family’s car, scrolling her phone, her outfit color-matched to the coachwork down to the last detail, an entrant’s badge pinned to her chest. Barely past two: the car still fresh, the human half tired first.

A lady in a yellow suit sitting on the running board of a red classic, on her phone

Under the flags#

The green Jaguar XJ220 with the cove and the fog behind

The magenta flags belong to the wedges, all of them last century’s ideas about the future. The Modulo’s placard says 1970: that year, people assumed we’d all be driving flying saucers by now. The BMW’s cockpit runs on rows of green digital tubes, and looking out from inside it, the future it imagined faces a lawn full of straw hats. None of these futures ever made production, and now they park on the same grass as the retired racers, which seems fair enough.

The white Pininfarina Modulo concept and the crowd around it

Looking out from the BMW concept cockpit, a dash of green digital tubes

In the prewar section the placards switch registers: no performance, only provenance. Year, model, the coachbuilder, the owner’s name and hometown. The red-and-black Duesenberg even had its party trick written up as a title, “Disappearing Top,” the roof folding away without a seam.

The red-and-black 1931 Duesenberg convertible with a green ribbon on its bumper

The green ribbon#

Around three the answer arrived: the green ribbon marks a winner. And a prize at Pebble Beach comes with a hard rule, the car must drive itself off the fairway and up the award ramp; if it can’t get up, the prize doesn’t count. For a good number of the entrants, this is one more road test, ninety-odd years after leaving the factory.

So a very slow queue formed along the fairway. The grandstand and the slope sat packed with people waiting to watch them climb: a red Maserati drove itself right past the back of the queue.

The lady of the Miura rested her arms on the window frame, in no hurry at all; on the tail of the Land Rover ahead of her, the ribbon was already tied.

A lady resting her arms on the sill of an orange Miura, the packed grandstand behind

An orange-and-grey two-tone coupe inched forward steaming from its rear wheel, a marshal in a headset waving it on, while the French bulldog in the back window stuck its tongue all the way out and delivered the crowd’s review for it.

Closing time#

With the prizes handed out, the crowd drifted toward the exits and the field went quiet again. The chrome bird on the black classic’s radiator cap held its takeoff pose; its audience had already gone.

The chrome bird mascot and grille of a black prewar car, the sea beyond the white fence

Maserati number 500 was down to its last two spectators, sitting on a box behind the car, saying nothing, looking at the sea. The two gentlemen in hats by the EB110s weren’t finished: backs to the cars, and most likely not talking about them either.

The red number-500 Maserati on the turf, two men sitting on a box behind it

A silver and a blue Bugatti EB110 with two men in hats chatting beside them

The way out cut back between the tents. Bugatti’s new car turned slowly on a black turntable; Mercedes had tidied its stand into a spotless race shop. Before dark the turf goes back to the golf course, and the cars go back to their climate-controlled garages, until next August, when they come back to prove they still run.