For a concours d’elegance in only it’s second outing, the Kiawah Island Motoring Retreat offers something for any car collector.
The agenda begins on Friday with a vintage car rally. A pair of seminars followed. The first focused on the collector car market with valuation expert, writer and appraiser Dave Kinney. The second was a design seminar featuring another expert, Harvey Geiger. In the evening, there was a South Carolina Low Country-style oyster bake.
The food was excellent, as was the hospitality of the volunteers and Retreat staff.
Saturday started early with the “Cars on Kiawah” on the Ocean Park concours site, basically a day for people with nice driver cars from the local car clubs to show their cars and have some fun. The field had 200 outstanding regional and local collector cars for spectators to toggle over.
The dinner afterward was a old-fashioned Southern-style pig roast that was absolutely delicious. As you have guessed, we were very well fed over the weekend.
Sunday started early with concours cars on the field as early as 7 a.m. and a judges meeting at 7:30. Those of us foolish enough to stay up late the night before paid for it.
Harry Geiger and I judged the 1948-1978 open sports cars class which includes the likes of a Swallow Doretti, a wonderful Porsche 356 roadster, and our class winner, the most stunning Austin Healey 100M I have ever seen.
And that was just our class. Also on the field were a Maserati A6GCS, a Porsche 550 Spider, a class-winning Iso Griffo, the finest AC Greyhound I have ever seen, and a wonderful 1951 Chrysler station wagon.
By shows end, the Best of Show award was anyone’s guess and just about all of us guessed wrong. We were pleased to find that the Best of Show award went to Gordon Logan’s Auburn Boattail Speedster.
Photos by Andy Reid
