Automatic elegance

Attending a showcase of more than five hundred vintage and specialty vehicles worth a lot of moola and displayed across a pristine golf course amid a government shutdown can feel a tad decadent, at least at first. But walking among these gleaming and superbly designed machines on a gorgeous fall day, soaking up both the sunshine and the passion oozing from collectors and spectators alike, resulted in a quick shift into affirmative gear. After all, celebrating quality and style is never a bad idea.

The event was the Hilton Head Island Concours d’Elegance & Motoring Festival, and in addition to the parties, entertainment, and automobile show & tell there were educational programs and support generated for youth programs. According to the organizers, the event was a celebration of craftsmanship, innovation, design, and community spirit.

One unmistakable example of craftsmanship was provided by James Pickard of Beaufort. He sat demurely in a folding chair behind his 2024 Caterham, a British specialist lightweight sportscar which he said was a continuation of the Lotus Seven line. All the pieces were shipped to Jim from across the pond for assembly here. “It has to come in as a kit, then you put the kit together…it comes with no title because it’s not a car.” Six months later, it’s now a titled car which drives like a dream.

James says he’s been a car nut forever and has restored two Austin-Healey Sprites and a Sunbeam Tiger roadster. But he was reluctant to drive the vehicles with their sixty-plus year old parts, “So I said, okay, I’m done with old cars. I want a car that looks old, but all the parts are new, and I’d had my eye on doing a Caterham for about the last 50 years.”

Now he loves tooling around and sharing his engineering accomplishment. Jim says people follow him and stop him just to chat. “I tell people on the practicality scale it rates a zero, but on the fun and attraction scale it’s a ten.”

On the innovation axis was Jim Harrell’s midnight black 1939 Ford Deluxe Coupe. Jim explained that this model, with its huge trunk and roomy back seat, was known for being a moonshine-running car, “…they became famous up in the hills of Tennessee and North Carolina and would be modified with more horsepower to haul the moonshine down from the stills.” On this day the coupe presented more innocently as a stunningly suave and charming visitor from a romantic past. It’s easy to nod in agreement when Jim waxes poetic on the cars around him being art forms and the realized visions of his fellow collectors, concluding, “It’s actually a common language around the world…and there’s not too many people you can you run into that don’t want to talk about cars.”

One person who likes to talk cars is my wife, Allison. She wears the motor-loving pants in our family. It was fun to hear her exclaim and downright purr when she saw something nice as we wandered. Her aesthetic pinnacle was a Rally Red 1966 Corvette Convertible Stingray with its distinctive “coke bottle” shape. She sweet-talked the owner into sitting in the driver’s seat. As we prepared to depart, he took his shot, “If you ever leave your husband come find me,” to which she instantly replied “as long as you still have this car…”

It was that kind of spirited afternoon at a car festival in paradise.

Luke Frazier is a writer and award-winning media producer who recently transplanted to the Lowcountry. He runs NOW Communications, which focuses on the needs of mission-driven organizations.