Tenth Anniversary Winter Park Concours d'Elegance

November 5-6, 2011
Winter Park, Florida
Text and Images by Barton Workman

The Winter Park Concours d'Elegance has firmly established itself as one of the must do motoring events during the Autumn Central Florida motoring season.

Established in 2002 by Ferrari stallwart Bob Tallgren, the weekend long event starts bright and early on the Saturday morning with a Tour d'Elegance and breakfast at Dexter's in Hannibal Square.

The Tour d'Elegance continues after breakfast over back roads to a secret location where a luncheon is served to participants.

The evening's activities include the Aeroport Reception, a standard fare hangar event mixing cars, jets, water craft and motorcycles benefiting Seminole Kids House.

Sunday sees the big day arrive as outstanding examples of pre and post war, sports, exotic and luxury cars line both sides of Park Avenue and special displays into Central Park all surrounded by trendy shops, restaurants and bars.

The 2011 version of the Wiinter Park Concours featured dual honored marquees, Ferrari and Cadillac. So, Central Park was full of pristine vintage and modern examples of the best from Maranello and Detroit.

Among the more interesting new cars on display included the 2012 Lamborghini Aventador from Ultimate Motors in Longwood.

The Aventador, resplendent in display white, drew the largest crowds of the weekend with many seeing the replacement for the venerable Murciallago for the first time.

Vernon Knoll of Ultimate Motors proudly showed the Aventador to interested spectators saying they had the car at another event at Daytona International Speedway the day before with Lamborghini test driver Valentino Balboni on the track with it,  "scaring people into buying one" with a laugh.

Notably absent from this year's Winter Park Concours was the sale area they had attempted last year. Not quite an auction and not quite a used car lot, last year's experiment attempting to sell high end exotics at the event obviously didn't catch on as it was not attempted again.