Top-notch show. Long name, though: the Concours d’Elegance of America at St. John’s. The 2012 edition featured a strong field of cars and several special categories for some added fun and interest.
Successor to the event known simply as Meadow Brook for all those years, the show at the Inn at St. John’s is now the Motor City’s swankest car happening. Two best of show winners are recognized, American and Foreign. This year’s American winner was the imposing (six hood shutters per side) 1933 Chrysler Imperial LeBaron Dual Cowl owned by Margie and Joseph Cassini III. The Foreign award went to Jim Patterson’s snow-white 1933 Delage D8S. Both cars are former Pebble Beach winners and are included in the slide show below.
The special categories for this show included classes for microcars, vintage front-engined dragsters, and station wagons. It’s great to see the wagons, often relegated to parts-donor status in the car restoration world, getting the attention they deserve. Wagons often employed unique body makers, models, trim, and interiors, which make them fascinating to study today. Two MCG favorites on the show field yesterday included Joseph Carfagna’s ’59 Buick wagon and Robert Waldock’s Cadillac Broadmoor Skyview, a rare (1 of 6) hotel limo.
Both these wagons are also included in the gallery below. Motor City Garage will be circling back later in the week with more photos from the event, so stay tuned.
I have to ask how you always get such rich vibrant colors like on the green Lamborgini and red Ferrari Spyder in the lead photo. They must be photoshop right?
No photoshop, only minor color correction using MS Office. I don’t even have time to open Photoshop.
The trick to color is careful exposure — so you need a camera with manual shutter and aperture adjustment, of course. Also, newer digital Nikons, Canon, etc metering systems have color correction menus — these work sorta like using different color films and filters in the film era. I usually run my Nikons one or two clicks toward “vivid.”
Also, at a show like this the light will be extremely harsh. A bright red car will be tomato on the sunny side and maroon on the shady side, with two or three stops of difference from one side to the other. I watch the metering very closely and shoot all the way around every car. Sometimes the best exposures come by surprise, for me anyway.
Hope that helps, thanks for the compliment.
Great pics Bill, wish I could have been there. The pesky obligation of working every other weekend really curtails my summer car show fun!
I restored Joe’s ’59 Buick Wagon and we both enjoyed showing it at the concours. We’ll be back in the Detroit area in a couple of weeks for the Woodward Dream Cruise driving a Black ’62 Ford Country Squire (fake woody) Wagon. We are in the process of doing a full boogie resto on a ’60 Chrysler New Yorker 4 door Hardtop Station Wagon. Great show! Cheers!
Nice wagon! See you at Woodward. I’ll look for the ’62 Ford.
Great shots from St. John’s. Wondered if you’d be interested in checking mine out sometime. Thanks.
Your stuff is beautiful. Where are you based?