Thanks to Josh Scoot for contributing photos
Historic Collection takes home silverware at Pebble Beach
Pebble Beach Concours of Elegance put on a incredible showing of BPR and FIA GT cars this year.
The lineup included our 1998 Silverstone-winning CLK GTR and 1993 Le Mans 'winning' XJ220C, a McLaren F1 GTR Short Tail, F40 GTE, Bugatti EB110 Competizione and Porsche 993 GT2R. Each of these significant race cars were also accompanied by their road legal counterparts, many of which are super rare cars built in order to homologate the race cars.
It was fantastic to see our XJ220C Lightweight alongside an XJ220 road car painted in the same shade of Silverstone Green. You can really see how the race car is derived directly from the road car. Looking at the two together it is quite incredible how the race car is a massive 400kg lighter than the road car.
Our 1998 CLK GTR race car (Chassis 011) sat alongside a road going CLK GTR Strassenversion, Mercedes built 20 of these road cars in order to homologate the five race cars for their hugely successful FIA GT seasons.
Not only was it a privilege to be selected to show two cars at the world famous Pebble Beach Concours but we even came back with a win! Our 1993 Jaguar XJ220C Lightweight won the Montagu of Beaulieu Trophy for the most significant British car. As technically the last Jaguar to win at Le Mans it is great that the significance of this XJ220 is being recognised.
Judges for the class included Patrick Peter and Stephane Ratel, two of the founders of the BPR race series which ran from 1994 to 1996 before becoming the FIA GT championship in 1997. It’s fair to say they know what they’re looking at when it comes to 1990’s GT1 cars…
Throughout its rich history Pebble Beach concours has been internationally renowned for the showing of vintage and pre war cars, although we love these cars too it is a refreshing change to introduce some more modern cars to the mix. The BPR and GT cars certainly proved to be a crowd favourite!