Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, 2013 Tour d'Elegance

Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, 2013 Tour d'Elegance Photos and Stories.

Concours d'Elegance, Car Show , 2013-08-18, Pebble Beach Lodge, Pebble Beach, California, US

Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, 2013 Tour d'Elegance

In the mid of August, in the California Monterey Bay Area, the land surrounding the bay is transformed into 'Car World'. Cars from all over the world arrive, trucked in, driven in, shipped in. Old cars, new cars, special designed prototypes, racecars, show cars. Cars are raced on the track, parked on specially built stages, sold, and bought, exotic cars on most every street corner, rare marques spread abundantly on golf greens

One favorite event is the running of ancient, priceless vehicles on the streets and roads that makeup the Carmel-by-the-Sea, Carmel Highlands and Big Sur area. What is unique about this "drive" is these cars are the same vehicles at will grace the lawn at the Lodge at Pebble Beach for the Pebble Beach Concourse d'Elegance for some of the harshest judging for originality and excellence in the world just a few days away.

This 'running of the cars' is called "Pebble Beach Tour d'Elegance". The vehicles ranged from a 1906 White Model F Roi des Belges Turning, from nearby San Marino, California to a 1953 Siata 208CS Balbo Berlinetta from Knokke, Belgium, and much more. There were around 200 cars signed up for this little 'drive'.

The 'Tour' starts out in the early morning damp mist amongst the pines near the 'Lodge' and runs single file through the roadways of the famed "17 Mile Drive" and off into the surrounding hills. This year the Tour did a lap on the Mazda Raceway, Laguna Seca, a first for the Tour. Then they were off on a grueling hill climb up the very, even for modern-day cars, steep North side of the Los Laureles Grade. Which then drops down an equally steep South side to the Carmel Valley Road. The Tour is timed to arrive in the center of Carmel-by-the-Sea, on Ocean Avenue at noon for an open-air lunch in the central Devendorf Park. The route makes a great viewing opportunity as the cars race by but Ocean Avenue lunch-brake is quite another story altogether.

The cars enter Ocean Avenue and reach a roadblock, which stacks them nose-to-tail, side-by-side on all 4 lanes. It's a jam-up. Then the lunch bell seems to ring and every driver and passenger walks off. They just leave these priceless museum quality cars in the middle of the road and go off to have lunch.

Once lunch is over the owners return to their vehicles and roar-up their engines and at the signal they are off down Ocean Avenue, swerving to miss the barricades set out in zigzag arrangement to slow the drivers as they head downhill for the turn at the bottom of the village.

Just another day in what has become the Monterey Week.