2022 Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d’Este Archives

Introduce

The winner of the Trofeo BMW Group has been declared. The Bugatti 57 S is the impressive overall winner of the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este 2022. The convertible built in 1937 owned by Andrew Picker from Monaco was awarded the honour of “Best of Show” by the Jury of experts.The most important award at the world’s most traditional and exclusive heritage beauty contest for Historic Cars was therefore conferred on a vehicle from Italian and French co-production. Bugatti and the traditional coachbuilder Vanvooren located in Courbevoie near Paris created an ideal symbiosis as an engineering masterpiece defined by impressive aesthetic clarity. The three-day festival of classic cars on the shores of Lake Como drew to a close today with the gala prize award ceremony. Once again, the festival was a celebration of elegance and timeless beauty on four wheels. The Bugatti 57 S triumphed in a carefully curated field of participating rare jewels from eight decades of automobile history. The winning car from Class A “The golden Age of Elegance: The Art Deco Era of Motor Car Design” is the first of just four Bugatti Type 57 S automobiles reputed to have been bodied by Vanvooren as convertibles. The elegant convertible body and perfectly balanced proportions accentuate calm, knife-edge lines that reject any form of opulence or flamboyant ornamentation. One of the previous ten owners, a Vice President of General Motors, swapped the Bugatti inline eight-cylinder powerhouse for a Buick V8 for test purposes. The fact that after four decades of separation the long-sought original engine turned up in an Internet search and found its way back to the car is surely almost a modern-day miracle.The Jury had already provided an eagerly awaited highlight for participants and guests alike when it announced the Class Winners and Mentions of Honour in the course of the afternoon. A total of 51 outstanding classic cars from different eras of automobile history were nominated for the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este 2022. The Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este 2022 provides an impressive array of diverse Historic Cars. They range from rare automobiles created in the golden era of coachbuilding in the 1920s and 1930s, when the automobile was emancipated from being essentially an engineering product to becoming an object of desire and elegance, to sports models with hugely impressive contours.

CLASS A: THE GOLDEN AGE OF ELEGANCE:
THE ART DECO ERA OF MOTOR CAR DESIGN

Class Winner
Bugatti, 57 S, 1937, Andrew Pisker, MON

Mention of Honour
Cord, 812 Phaeton, 1936, The JBS Collection Jack B. Smith Jr., USA

CLASS B: KOMPRESSOR! THE SUPERCHARGED MERCEDES-BENZ

Class Winner
Mercedes-Benz, 540 K Cabriolet A, 1936, Hans Hulsbergen, SUI

Mention of Honour
Mercedes-Benz, 540 K Spezial-Roadster, 1936, Richard Workman, USA

CLASS C: CELEBRATING 150 SEASONS AT VILLA D’ESTE:
HOW GRAND ENTRANCES WERE ONCE MADE

Class Winner
Chrysler, Boano Coupé Speciale, 1956, Stephen Bruno, USA