PEBBLE BEACH CONCOURS D’ELEGANCE

The Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is one Sunday in mid-August on the eighteenth fairway of Pebble Beach Golf Links, with the Pacific behind it: some two hundred historic cars, driven onto the grass at dawn, judged through the day for their style and technical merit, their history, their originality and the accuracy of their preservation or restoration, and sent up an awards ramp in the afternoon until one is named Best of Show. It is the finale of Monterey Car Week. As its organisers put it, it “is not a contest of speed, but of elegance.”

Since the 1970s the Chairman has stood at the entry to the field and welcomed each car, one by one, onto the eighteenth fairway.

The Road Races

It began as an afterthought to a race. Sterling Edwards wanted a road race on the West Coast and took the idea to the Del Monte Properties Company, through his friend John B. “Jack” Morse, and the races were given to Pebble Beach. A concours was added “to underscore a more social and genteel aspect of motorsports”, on the pattern of the European concours of the 1920s and 1930s. Phil Hill, who drove in the first race, remembered snow fencing and hay bales lining the road through the forest: “The Pebble Beach Concours was decidedly subsidiary to the Race back then.”

The first show was held on 4 November 1950, with thirty cars on a practice tee and driving range by the Beach Club near the Del Monte Lodge. Phil Hill won the race in a Jaguar XK120. Best of Show went to the Edwards R-26 Special Sport Roadster, which Edwards had built himself and had not formally entered; he decided to show it at the last minute, and it finished fourteenth in the race. The second show had twenty-three cars, and in 1952 the Concours moved to the eighteenth.

New cars won Best of Show in each of the first five years. In 1953 a Ferrari 212 Inter lost to an Austin Healey 100, and its owner drove off in fury, carving long tyre tracks into the Lodge lawn. In 1955 a 1931 Pierce-Arrow shown by Phil Hill became the first classic car to win, and the Concours turned to collector cars; other concours followed. The races ended in 1956, when Ernie McAfee was killed on the tight roads of the Del Monte Forest, and a circuit was built inland at Laguna Seca.

There was no show in 1960, and none in 2020. J. B. Nethercutt has won Best of Show six times, a record. In 2026 its giving to charity passed fifty million dollars.

Dawn Patrol

Cars are chosen, not merely entered. Applications go out in November and are due in early January; a selection committee meets in February. A car may not generally return within ten years, and a car accepted may not be shown anywhere else in August before the Concours, save certain cars at the Monterey Motorsports Reunion.

On the Thursday before, the Tour d’Elegance takes more than a hundred and fifty of the entrants on a drive of some seventy miles. Lorin Tryon and Jules Heumann began it in 1998, answering the charge that concours cars were too seldom driven. A car that completes it wins a green ribbon, and the advantage if it ties in its class.

On the Sunday the field opens at half past five in the morning, and the cars come onto the fairway under their own power: this is Dawn Patrol. Class Judges look first at originality and authenticity; Honorary Judges then walk the field “with an eye on elegance”. Each class winner drives up the awards ramp. Best of Show must first win its class, and the chief judges and their teams vote. The three or four cars with the most votes are called to the stage as nominees, and the winner is announced “amidst an explosion of confetti and the popping of corks”. It takes an engraved trophy and an engraved Rolex.

The seventy-fifth Concours was held on 16 August 2026, with two hundred and eighteen cars from fourteen countries and thirty states. Best of Show went to a 1935 Duesenberg SSJ Special Speedster, one of two made and first owned by Clark Gable, shown by Harry Yeaggy of Cincinnati, who had won once before, in 2007: “I won once before, 19 years ago, but I appreciate it a lot better now.” Its second owner had lived on the point at Pebble Beach; the car, he said, “has come back home today”. More than $4.3 million was raised for charity.

What to Know

It is held on the Sunday that ends Monterey Car Week, in mid-August. The seventy-sixth is on Sunday 15 August 2027, at The Lodge at Pebble Beach, with the Tour d’Elegance on Thursday 12 August. The 17-Mile Drive is closed to other traffic from 12 to 15 August.

Tickets for 2027 go on sale in late 2026. In 2026 general admission cost $650 and the hospitality enclosures from $1,200 to $5,000; the dearer of them had sold out by 13 August. Tickets are for the show field on the Sunday only, and include entry to Pebble Beach, parking and the shuttle.

The published guidance is resort casual, elevated by “the perfect topper” and polished, with comfortable walking shoes and layers for cool mornings and warm sun. A lounge suit, light in weight, and a hat; the Court dresses a level above the guidance.

Monterey Regional Airport is fifteen minutes from Pebble Beach; San Jose is an hour or more by road, San Francisco two hours or more. On the Sunday ride-share is encouraged, with a drop-off at the Concours Village, and a shuttle from Carmel Plaza. Stay at The Lodge, The Inn at Spanish Bay or Casa Palmero, and book months ahead.

The mistake is to come for the awards. The field opens at half past five, and the cars are driven onto it at dawn.

The Court

The Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is not the Court’s own. Places on the Patron’s Patio, beside the awards ramp, are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay at The Lodge or on the peninsula, and the table afterward. Monterey Car Week fills the days before it.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.