17th Annual St. Michaels Concours d’Elegance, September 29, 2024

17th Annual St. Michaels Concours d’Elegance, Kent Island Yacht Club, Chester, MD, September 29, 2024

The 2024 event had a field of entries that surpassed previous years in both quantity and quality. The judges chose the 1909 Rolls Royce 20/50 Silver Ghost Roi Des Belges Tourer as Best Of Show. The Most Elegant Open car award was presented to the 1932 Chrysler Imperial 2-door Cabriolet with a one-off body by Bohman and Schwartz. The Most Elegant Closed car award went to the one-off 1937 Chrysler Imperial seven-passenger Town Car designed and built by LeBaron for Walter P. Chrysler as a gift for his wife Della.

The winner of the best Early European Sports Car was a dark red 1953 Fiat 8V Supersonic designed by Giovanni Savonuzzi and bodied by Ghia, and is one of 14 produced. First in class for the best Corvette was the one-of-a-kind 1956 SR-2 race car built for GM Styling Chief Harley Earl’s son, and was the 1958 SCCA National Championship winner.

The oldest car on display was the 1899 Conrad Motor Carriage Model 60, a tiller-steered chain-driven steam car. The company was gone by 1904, and this is one of four Conrads known to survive, and the only surviving single-seat Model 60. The 1911 Velie H1 Race Runabout was built by Willard Velie, a grandson of John Deere. Velie automobiles were retailed through John Deere dealers. This is one of three cars that the Velie factory entered in the inaugural Indianapolis 500 in 1911.

The Indiana Cars class was won by a 1937 Cord 812 Sportsman Supercharged Convertible, and was one of the final cars built by Cord. The Sportsman offered several engineering advances including front-wheel drive, electrically controlled gearshift, concealed headlights, and monocoque construction. The People's Choice trophy went to the 1929 Duesenberg “Northport” with a custom mahogany body designed in the 1960s by the original Duesenberg SSJ designer, J. Herbert Newport. It took three attempts over thirty years to build the body.