Pebble Beach 2021 Debrief

For James and Harvey, returning to California for the festivities surrounding the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance proved to be a refreshing return to normality, and an excellent week in all regards.

Despite the absence of many European dealers and collectors, team DK found the atmosphere during the week to be exuberant and similar to years past, with lots of friends and clients to be met, new acquaintances made, but with slightly smaller crowds than seen in years past.

Rather than travel in a rental car from the airport, James and Harvey instead used the new-to-inventory 400 Superamerica SWB Coupe Aerodinamico as their daily transport and enjoyed driving the car on the Quail Rally. On California's roads, the car was a fantastic driver, tremendously capable and a superb alernative to other 1960s Ferraris, such as a 250 SWB Berlinetta. Special thanks to the Kadoorie family for allowing us to participate.

Boarding the plane to San Francisco, James and Harvey were dead-set on returning with the McLaren F1 from the Gooding & Company auction but that wasn't to be, and the car went to a new home in the U.S. at a market-correct price with DK as the immediate underbidders.

Commenting on the week, James said: "It was great to be back in California and we were hugely grateful for being allowed into the U.S. We found that the U.S. market was still very much alive. We've handled many export sales to Europe and the U.S. this year and and despite the fact that there were very few European bidders, we still saw some extremely strong results from people buying in the room. As travel opens up, we anticipate stronger results and it seems that our exciting and dynamic market is here to stay for the time being.

"We saw an F50 and two F40s bring very strong results which mimic our recent sales. As world-leading specalists of these cars, its great to see such strong results considering we've advised many clients to invest in these cars. That being said, this doesn't mean that the market for the older cars is dead, but that there are new buyers on the scene, and our client base shall continue to expand as a result.

"On the lawn at Pebble it was great to see many cars that had been handled by DK previously, including the 340 MM Vignale Spider 0350 AM in the special class of former winners of the Pebble Beach road races. David Cottingham owned the car for a number of years and was restored and sold in 1984 in order to fund our previous premises in Watford."

The next few weeks will be very busy for team DK, with James at the 24 Hours of Le Mans to race the Dallara in one of the support races, followed by both the Concours of Elegance at Hampton Court Palace and Salon Prive in the first week of September.

Photos by Zach Brehl