Welcome back to my coverage of the Concours of Elegance at Hampton Court Palace.
Today we’re looking at the cars from the golden era of design of the 1950s and 1960s.
We’ll start with a brand that you normally wouldn’t affiliate with this era – BMW.
This is the 507. It was produced from 1956 until 1959. It was meant to compete with other European sports cars of the time such as the Mercedes 190SL, but high production costs pushed the price well above it’s MB counterpart. In the end only 252 were built and the car was a financial loss for BMW. However, decades later these are now incredibly collectible.
We’ll stick with the Germans for now with Mercedes-Benz. The 300SL in silver over a red interior is an exquisite car!
Hilton & Moss, who regular readers of this blog will recognise, spent more than 4000 hours over a three year period restoring this car.
the 300 Series (W186) became known as Adenauers as German Chancellor Konrad Adeneuer used them as state vehicles.
Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, a figure of divine importance in Rastafarianism, also owned one.
The ‘Pagoda’ SL (W113) is an incredibly popular model amonst classic Mercedes enthusiasts along with the later R107 SL.
I would still absolutely love to own a stacked headlight Mercedes. This W111 220SE coupe was absolutely stunning!
I had a very unusual opportunity to see the Mercedes C111, brought over from the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart.
The C111 sadly never went into production, but was a test bed for various technologies. This one houses a four-rotor rotary engine. A few manufacturers experimented with rotary engines. NSU were the first to really use them in any significant quantity and then Mazda really jumped on it and made some phenomenal cars with them.
Porsche 356s are growing on me!
Of course the Italians were the kings of this era.
Ferrari produced some stunning machines in this period and were well represented at this event.
We’ll start proceedings with a very early Ferrari – A 1953 250MM. Just 31 of these cars were built, 13 were bodied by Vignale and of those 10 had this Series II body.
A gorgeous 250GT California Spyder. I’ve never seen one with the hard top fitted before. It looks rather lovely!
It was great to see a 275 in person. This is one of just 27 right hand drive examples built for the U.K market. I personally like the longer nose and the aerodynamic headlight covers of the 275. I think one would make a fantastic slot car!
There were three Ferrari 212s. The 212 is a model that I hadn’t come across before. There was 212 Inter which is a grand tourer and the 212 Export which is a racing car. They were made in very limited quantities between 1951 and 1952.
330GTC.
There were only 14 365 California Spyders built over 1966 and 1967, making this one of the rarest Ferrari road cars ever built.
It had a long wheelbase and luxurious fittings which made it perfect for the long American highways.
The Daytona was produced in between 1968 and 1973, so production started in the 60s and so I’m allowed to feature it here. I’ve always thought these were a very elegant car.
Maseratis of the 1960s were strikingly beautiful.
The Lamborghini Miura was the first mid engined supercar and the fastest road car in the world when it came out in 1966. I dare say its one of Lamborghini’s prettiest cars too. Bertone did a wonderful job with this body.
Here’s an unusual one – the Ghia L 6.4 Coupe. It’s a Chrysler V8 and 3 speed automatic gearbox housed in a hand built body by Ghia.
26 of these were produced between 1960 and 1963 and everyone was specified to the owner’s unique tastes. personalisations across the production run included everything from engraved name plates and uprated sound systems to a cocktail bar in the rear seating area.
The car was never advertised, you had to be invited to buy one. Notable owners included Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Peter Lawford of the Rat Pack.
Finally from the Italians we have the Iso Grifo.
A little bit like the Ghia this was a blend of Italian styling with an American drive train. This Series II was fitted with the famous 327cui “small block” Chevrolet and automatic transmission.
The car was brought by famous movie director Albert Hitchcock in December 2023 who commissioned a full, bare metal, restoration by McGrath Maserati. The Concours of Elegance at Hampton Court was the car’s post restoration debut.
Aston Martin’s David Brown (DB) series of GT cars are a range of strikingly beautiful cars from their inception with the 2 litre sports (commonly referred to as the DB1) in 1948 to the DB12 of present day.
The car of the range that really captivates people is the DB5, partly due to the James Bond films I’m sure.
The earlier DB4 I always thought was a handsome car.
The aforementioned 2 litre sport (DB1).
the DB2/4 GT in both road and race guises.
The DB3S was a little tube framed, purpose built race car.
This car DB3S/119 is now owned by Hong Kong based billionaire Michael Kadoorie.
Jaguar are another British name synonymous with building beautiful cars in the 1960s. Of course you’re thinking of the E-Type – a car Enzo Ferrari reportedly said to be “the most beautiful car in the world”. Surprisingly there weren’t any E-Types (that I saw) at this show, which is incredibly unusual for a concours event.
There were, however, several XKs.
The C-Type was the factory race car developed from the XK120 (which at it’s launch in 1948 was the fastest production car in the world). It shared the same 3.4ltr straight six as the standard road car (though tuned to 200bhp), though the chassis was much lighter and the body much more aerodynamic. It debuted at Le Mans in 1951 and won outright.
The D-Type came along a little later in 1955. Rather than being a body on ladder frame chassis it was monocoque construction, something we take for granted now but was revolutionary at the time. It also had disc brakes on all four wheels rather than just the fronts which, again, was very uncommon for the mid 1950s.
I know you’d be hard-pressed to call a Bentley of this era a sports car, but they made some beautiful machines in the 50s and 60s.
The AC Ace would become the Shelby Cobra – a car we covered in detail in my article covering The Legendary AC Cars at the London Concours, which you car read about here: https://motorsportformentalhealth.com/2025/07/15/london-concours-2025-the-legendary-ac-cars/
The Unipower was a little midengined sports car based on the British Leyland Mini. It came out just one year after Lamborghini’s Miura and was dubbed as the ‘mini Miura’ by journalists.
Finally we have the Ogle Triplex GTS. This car was commissioned by the Triplex glass company to demonstrate how the Triplex Ten-Twenty safety glass could be used as a part of the structure of the car. This would pave the way for the glass to be used in the glass roofs, sun roofs and larger windscreens on production cars.
It’s based on a Reliant Scimitar.
Thanks for reading!
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By Richard Francis.
