Car & Art Concours de Caractère Car Show – March 30, 2024

For the second time, the British Car Club of SW Florida worked with the Peace River Botanical & Sculpture Gardens and the Punta Gorda Isle Car Club to create this concours for all interesting cars. No limitation on age or style, as long as the cars and trucks had character. The result was a mix of vehicles, which you may not be able to see anywhere else. There were low value daily drivers and multi-million-dollar special cars, tiny micro cars and large luxury sedans, a Buick from 1911 and several brand new 2024 sportscars, perfectly stock or heavy modified, something for everybody’s taste.

After the original January 14th date and the February 18th “rain date” has to be cancelled due to rain, the second postponement finally worked out and this third time was in fact the charm. From the beginning to the end, we had perfect weather conditions – not too cold – not too hot. A steady stream of cars started arriving already before 8:00 AM and the last car was several minutes late. In all 127 different models from 46 Brands and 7 countries from 4 continents made it into the show. Some drove up in hope to sneak in and were turned around, because only one representative car per model was allowed. The Harbor Corvette Club and the Paradise Porsche Club did everything possible to show complete historic line-ups of their favorite cars so that the audience could see how the models developed over the years in design and technology. With 49 cars, from 18 Brands the USA was the dominant country, followed by Germany and the UK with 30 cars each and Italy with 11 cars. Japan was represented by 5 cars. France and South Africa had each 1 car in the show.

All the volunteers, from the check-in, the photoshoot team, the parking and judging teams did a fantastic job by working hand in hand to make the show a success. When the photo prints were not in order and required a lot of extra work to be sorted out, the ladies from the check-in and photoshoot continued as the “office” team and didn’t lose their cool, but worked hard to make sure that the correct photo made it to the appropriate award. The judges had provided scores for the appearance of each car, truck or special vehicle. These numbers got merged with the points for age, rarity and historical impact on the industry or the manufacturers. As a result, the top trophies went to very special rare cars in excellent conditions.

For the car with the most need for some TLC the show organizers offered the Diamond in the Rough Award to: 1974 Mercedes-Benz 240D from Jeremy Alt.

Best American Car – Judged: 2009 Pontiac Solstice GXP from Sherwood Schaub

Best Foreign Car – Judged: 1993 Porsche 911 America Roadster from Bob Munao

Best in Show – Judged: 2015 Porsche 918 Spyder Weissach from Hank Bernbaum
Beside the Concours Judges, the audience was called upon to select their Best in Show People’s Choice: 2007 Ferrari F430 Spyder from George Gatto

And the Executive Director of the PRBG – Tanna Horner (representing the absent President of the Board), the President of the BCCSWF – Isabel Mack and the President of the PGICC – Gary Kropf were tasked to select the car with the most character and to present the Presidents Cup to the: 2016 Morgan Three-Wheeler from Randy Keys (BCCSWF Member).

Other BCCSWF Members were Winers of Best in Class:

BCCWF Members won 2^nd Place in Class:

Overall, the Car & Art Concours de Caractère 2024 was a full success, and we will start working on next year’s event soon.