Star Road

I don’t care what you want to call yourself. Just be consistent, so others know what to say. I was reminded of that when I signed up for the Las Vegas Concours. Or is it as their website says, Concours at Wynn Las Vegas? Or as their Instagram says, Las Vegas Concours at Wynn? Or as Wikipedia refers to it, Las Vegas Concours d’Elegance? Road & Track even called it the Wynn Concourse for some reason. Whatever it is, the branding of this event fails the rule of consistency. So for this article, I’ll refer to this event by the simplest name that I like the most: Las Vegas Concours.

This is a relatively new event, having kicked off in 2019 at a golf course in Henderson (a suburb of Las Vegas) but then immediately denied a second annual event in 2020 due to the pandemic. In 2021 they held it in Summerlin (another Vegas suburb) at the Triple-A baseball stadium. In 2022 it moved to its current location, the golf course at the Wynn casino/resort/hotel/country club, which is right off Las Vegas Boulevard, aka The Strip.

Unfortunately, I was not feeling well on the day of this event. However, I had finally scored media passes and after missing the show for the previous two years, I really wanted to attend. I showed up a bit late, and after parking and navigating the huge property to get my media credentials, I finally reached the golf course just after 8 AM. Well, I thought I was late, but then these Koenigseggs rolled through to take their place on the lawn. I always get a kick out of supercars cruising with their nose lift up.

This show is mostly exotic cars, but there was a small section of Radwood-era stuff and others that appealed more to me. And these were heavy hitters too: you’re not going to find a clean Midnight Purple II R34 GT-R for under $200k anymore, and the R33 400R in the background is a million-dollar car now.

I really hope the people spending supercar money on a Nissan take these things out in the sun: it’s an experience of its own just to walk around the car and see how wildly the color changes between green, purple, and this gorgeous golden brown.

This was the first area I stumbled upon when I entered the golf course and definitely the most confused. I think the link between them is that they are all resto-mods of some flavor, although I never went back to get a closer look.

This poor P1 suffers from a problem that I saw a few times back in the day when I worked at the McLaren dealership. Every once in a while, a P1’s paintjob would look totally fine through your eyes or cell phone camera, but crazy splotchy through a polarizing filter. This silver example is sadly the worst one I’ve ever seen; the others only had the effect in one small area, which always made me think that the cars might have been partially repainted before delivery, but that’s just speculation.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Not crazy bad but definitely noticeable through a polarized lens. If I spent a million dollars on a new car I would be pretty bummed about that, but I do use my polarizer literally all the time.

This Aston Martin Valkyrie Spider had one of the tackiest modifications I have ever seen on a car: it was bejeweled with plastic crap.

It looked even worse than it sounds: thousands of cheap plastic orbs glued on (hopefully to a vinyl wrap?). This is a great metaphor for the current state of hypercars: tacky and useless paperweights that will never be used properly. But you know what? Both this literal world we live in and the metaphorical world of cars have plenty of room for all of us. The beauty of having your own car is being able to do what you want with it.

On the other side of the hypercar spectrum, Czinger brought out the battle-scarred 21C they used to set lap records at five California tracks.

Of course, the main Czinger claim to fame is their insane looking 3D-printed parts that are designed by generative AI. Despite the buzziest of buzzwords there, I think it signals the start of a new paradigm. If you look at suspension parts from perhaps 100 years ago, they are very rudimentary, with everything in simple chunky shapes. With time, suspension geometry became more advanced as design and manufacturing capabilities evolved. Czinger is pushing it forward again, 3D printing new materials that are designed in a process that puts mass only where it needs to be and nowhere else. Fascinating.

Like always, I experienced this event by taking multiple laps around the venue. I always like to keep moving; partially because I’m restless, but also because I find it important to change the scenery. Over time the light moves, the crowd moves, or you just feel a different way, so you capture the same scene in a different way.

Normally I post the photos in roughly the same order I shot them, but for this post I’m going to do a bit of time traveling; I didn’t get to capture these Meyers Manx shots until I came back around again later. Overall, this event had pretty boring staging of cars, which is par for the course at these golf course concours, but this Meyers Manx down in the sand bunker was fantastic.

I’ve never personally found a use case for why I would ever want to own a Meyers Manx, but just seeing these cars makes me want to find something to do with them.

I was intrigued by this particular exhaust design, from both an aesthetic and functional point of view. It looks pretty badass, but what does it do for one of the worst sounding gasoline-fueled engines of all time?

Here’s a unique car. This is a Lancia B20GT “Outlaw” by Thornley Kelham. There were supposedly nine of these built, their chopped top an homage to the B20GT that ran in the Carrera Panamericana. I actually saw the original car at Velocity Invitational in 2021:

This is the real deal, one of five “chop top” Aurelia B20GT’s prepared by the factory for the 1951 Carrera Panamericana.

Wow, these two black McLarens looked awesome in the sun. Despite how much I dislike black cars, sometimes black paint does look pretty epic.

The lines of the F1 are so clean, and I love the subtle aggression of the High Downforce Kit.

I think the P1 is also a super cool looking car, but in a completely different way. It has so many wild curves and the bodywork is incredibly complex.

The rear end just…isn’t there. And check out the insane lighting coming through the vents above the exhaust and lighting up the gold heat shielding.

When the P1 came out, I recall some journalist asking a McLaren rep if there were any P1 owners who would be able to drive their car to its limit. “Well, Jenson Button’s getting one,” came the response. Ah. It has the front tire width of a same-year Porsche 911 GT3 (245mm), but more than twice the horsepower, less weight, and active aerodynamics. It’s amazing that someone would look at the original P1 and think it needs even more power and aggression, but this “P1 HDK” by Lanzante does have precedent: back in the 90’s, two F1’s (018 and 073) were sent back to the factory to get the GTR engines and aero but kept their luxurious interiors.

Up at the top was a display of cars for sale at the Broad Arrow auction. On a side note, it’s so weird to see so much greenery in Las Vegas.

If you want to be a pedant, you can point out that the Bentley is technically an “Azure”. They still get full marks for the Continental vs Continental comparison in my book, though.

Lovely selection of BMW’s here (and a Thunderbird). It’s interesting to see Radwood-era cars pop up in these types of auctions. How much should a clean E36 M3 go for?

Seventy to ninety thousand! That’s optimistic for a black on black sunroof coupe with 27k miles. It ended up selling for $53,200 which still seems like a ridiculous number for an E36. Or is it? I suppose it depends on how you look at it. With options, this car stickered at $41,025 back in 1995–which is apparently $87,910 now. And a new M3 starts at $79,750.

I spotted it from afar, rising over the horizon: the world’s largest gathering of Bugatti Veyrons.

There were so many cars it was a total Veyron overload for me; I ended up hardly taking any photos of them because it was too much. However, this amazing “Vagues de Lumière” Grand Sport Vitesse really caught my eye.

I wish I had spent more time with it, but these are the only two photos I got. The hand-painted exterior is psychedelic and the interior is a really lovely shade of orangey brown.

There were only 99 Bugatti W16 Mistrals made; this was the runout version of the Chiron.

This is a Praga Bohemia, which is powered by a VR38DETT from the R35 Nissan GT-R.

And this is a McLaren Solus GT, a single seat track day special with a Judd V10. At a certain point, this lineup of five-million-dollar cars starts to get boring and even a little depressing. These hypercars are the ultimate expression of automotive evolution, and yet this is their destiny: to be immaculately presented on a show lawn before being ushered back into climate-controlled storage.

I can certainly appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into these cars, so ultimately car shows are just art exhibits to me. I try to ignore the disappointment of knowing that only a small fraction of all the cars in the entire show will ever be driven “properly” while being treated like investments, and just enjoy them for their lovely aesthetic qualities.

Like this amazing paint on a Pagani Imola Roadster. I’ve heard firsthand reports that Paganis are not very good to drive out in the twisties we enjoy, but just imagine cracking a cold one in your garage and admiring this paint!

Despite my best efforts, I’ve never been able to get into the Pokemon series. However, one thing I strongly relate to is the tagline of “Gotta Catch ’em All!” (which is ポケモンゲットだぜ！ in Japanese, in case you were wondering). That’s how I often feel about cars: I just want to see everything, from the lowliest shitbox to the most epic coachbuilt one-of-ones. So despite the yawn-inducing multitude of hypercars, I was still stoked to add cars like the Mercedes-AMG ONE to my “caught” list. Side note: I found it interesting that the plaque calls this car “Mercedes-Benz AMG Project One” when the Mercedes website officially calls it Mercedes-AMG ONE.

Overall I thought it was a pretty cool venue, with a ton of greenery (very odd in Vegas, as mentioned) with huge buildings in the background. On a few of these shots, I dipped into the Adobe Lightroom perspective correction to fix an awkward problem with shooting tall buildings: since the top of a building is further away from your camera than the bottom of the building, the more you look up (and therefore tilt the camera back), the more a building looks like it’s leaning away from you. This is what tilt-shift photography is intended for (although a lot of people use it for the “diorama effect“). I’m bringing up this dramatic geometry changing technology because it changed the look of the above photo quite a lot, but I hope it’s not noticeable even after pointing it out.

I actually worked at a Fisker dealership when they were selling the original Karma, so I feel a bit of a special relationship with this brand. It’s been split in two since then: essentially, the parts of the company relating to the Karma model were sold to a Chinese conglomerate who named their company Karma Automotive, while Fisker Automotive merged with an American SPAC and renamed to Fisker Inc. The American Fisker made cars that were objectively awful and filed for bankruptcy, while the Chinese Karma also made awful cars but is still chugging along, with this Amaris, a plug-in hybrid coupe, supposedly due to go on sale at the end of 2026.

Over here we started to get into the dealership section, which is something I’m familiar with: back when I worked at the McLaren dealership, I drove cars out to our local concours-type events and chatted with attendees.

At the very end of this row was something I only recognized from watching Top Gear: a Gumpert Apollo. Is it just the passage of time that makes cars like this feel more special than the modern stuff? It’s not like this one has stunning looks or an amazing engine; it just has the luck to have existed in the past and was shown off on the greatest motoring TV program ever.

There was a bit of transitional space here, and although they might have been a little lonely, it was a cool location for this Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale (the new one, of course–why did they have to give it the exact same name as the 1960’s original?)

The classic section was a bit sparse. Optimistically, I was glad to see plenty of space between the cars, but I couldn’t help but think that the overall turnout was very low.

Like the 400R earlier in the post, some of these Radwood era tuner cars are becoming legitimate classics in their own right, completely distinct from the recent wave of 80’s and 90’s appreciation. From that perspective, it’s not surprising to see the insane upturn on prices for the original NSX-R.

Okay this is not a classic, but it was very cool to see the a 2024 Nissan GT-R which was the very last model year we got in the USA. Even better to see it painted the new shade of Midnight Purple, which is generally quite dark but explodes in brightness in the sun. In Larry Chen’s video of this event, he graciously commented about how awesome the car community is in Las Vegas. I have immense professional respect for Larry and I’ve enjoyed hanging with him a bit at car shows here and there, but I think his kindness and excitement got the better of him. Although there are some serious shops and enthusiasts in Vegas, it’s a pretty awful place to drive a cool car and the scene reflects that. Additionally, most of the interesting cars at this show–like this GT-R–came from California.

There is just something extra cool about a Jaguar D-Type: these have to be the most beautiful racers of the 50’s, and possibly ever.

Just imagine being by that wheel at over 150 miles per hour! The “long nose” Le Mans cars are said to have been able to hit 190 miles per hour, which is just insane. At least they had disc brakes–one of the first cars ever to be so equipped.

They also had an XKSS, which was the road-going version of the D-Type. And not just any D-Type, this was Steve McQueen’s personal car. I find it hard to imagine a time when you could drive something like this around Los Angeles as a regular car.

As typical for dry Las Vegas, there was not a cloud in the sky. The November sun was already super harsh by 9 AM, which made photos even trickier. Of course, I had woken up late and then spent the beginning of the show–when the light was at its best–cruising around with my coworker, so I have to shoulder a bit of blame for not making hay before the sun shone. Generally though, bad light is just what you have to accept as an event photographer given that most events take place in the middle of the day, but the bigger bummer was also something out of my control: virtually any shot with the Sphere in the background was looking into the sun, so you were shooting the shady side of the car against a very bright backdrop.

In stark contrast to all the no-miles creampuff garage queens was this awesome 1966 Lamborghini 400 GT 2+2.

Wearing several rally stickers and its dents and dings as literal badges of pride, I thought this was easily one of the coolest cars at the entire show. Concours events are where you see the cliches of touchup paint between applied with a toothpick and blades of grass being removed from tire treads with tweezers, and yet no matter how hard they try to reach perfection, those cars will never reach the aesthetic appeal of the patinated evidence of a car used properly.

A common lament among photographers is that some photos are just not appealing when viewed on a cell phone. I feel like this photo is one of them; I hope you are viewing this on a properly sized computer monitor or even a TV. The gentleman in the foreground is wearing a Pontiac hat while checking out this 1959 Pontiac. I wonder what was going through his head at this moment; he was a youngster when this car came out. He’s probably feeling something similar to me when I saw the RUF CTR “Yellowbird” while wearing my Yellowbird T-shirt.

Here’s another shot that loses some luster on a small screen. I urge you to check out the full resolution and see just how detailed the hand-painting was. This is where I get frustrated that my Nikon 40mm f/2 has a pretty pathetic minimum focus distance of 11.4 inches (29 cm).

I probably could and should have paid more attention to the car classifications; I’m not sure what this (lovely) Ferrari 348 was doing amongst the 50’s American metal.

This 348 though…wow. This is the Ferrari 348 LM that raced in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1993 and 1994, and various international GT races from 1993 until 1997.

Regular 348’s are already gorgeous cars, but the 90’s period competition modifications really take it to the next level.

Right next to that was an F40 getting the full Concours checklist experience.

Since the car was fully opened up, I took a moment to peek inside the rarely-seen frunk area that shows where the NACA ducts on the hood go. The build quality of these old Ferraris is refreshingly simple and a bit crappy by modern standards; this was well before the era of supercars being mainly used as investments and art pieces.

Here are a couple of movie cars from “F1: The Movie”, that crappy flick starring Brad Pitt. The Porsche is just a standard 911 GT3 R, but the “F1” is actually a Dallara F2 with F1-like bodywork designed by Mercedes-AMG.

Of course, that pales in comparison to these actual F1 cars. Even when you go to official Formula One promotional events, there’s still a good chance that you’re seeing demo cars. All of these cars had the owner listed as “Petersen Automotive Museum”, so as far as I know/can tell, these are all competition Formula One cars.

This is the Red Bull RB19, the most dominant F1 car ever: Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez won 21 out of 22 races in 2023, beating the McLaren MP4/4’s record of 15 wins out of 16 rounds in 1988. These modern F1 cars are awesome; they are pure function which automatically makes them cool. And their capability is extreme, pulling over 5g while braking or turning.

But as usual, the older stuff is even cooler. This V10-powered Ferrari F399 took the 1999 Constructors’ Championship while driven by Michael Schumacher and Eddie Irvine. Ferrari quotes this as making 790hp at 16,300 RPM, and they only weighed 600kg (1323lbs)! That’s virtually the same power-to-weight ratio as the RB19 above, but with significantly less mechanical and aerodynamic grip and more importantly, in a much smaller car.

Going a little further back, another Schumacher-driven Ferrari, 1997’s F310B. This is the car in which Schumacher won five races in 1997 and finished dead last in the driver’s championship. Wait, what? Well, he scored 78 points which would have been a very close second to Jacques Villeneuve who won the championship with 81 points. But in the last race of the season at Jerez, those two drivers collided in what nowadays would be called a “racing incident”. But Max Mosely, FIA president at the time, was obsessed with the idea of anything “unfairly” influencing the championship, so three weeks after the season had ended, it was announced that Schumacher was completely disqualified–not just from that European Grand Prix, but from the entire season!

At first I was blown away by this simple steering wheel, but I looked it up: by 1997 Ferrari was using a very complex steering wheel with switches and gauges, so this simple Momo must be just for transport. On another note, I love how even Formula One cars are treated as people’s event storage lockers. There’s just nowhere to put your stuff at these events!

Las Vegas Concours is very much a place for modern vehicles. There was a Duesenberg, but it looked quite lonely up on this hillside by itself.

There was a small selection of pre-war cars. Admittedly, it’s easy to glaze over some of these cars in the same way as the most modern stuff just because of the way we like to use our cars. It just does not seem appealing to drive a slammed track-focused hypercar on our favorite gnarly bumpy and tight backroads. I was out in the twisties yesterday and saw 101 degrees on my dash; can you imagine being out there in a 1930’s sports car like this Auburn?

On the other side was this Mercedes corner.

Of course, what stood out to me in that lineup was this 1997 Brabus E65. This was a Mercedes E-Class tuned by Brabus in the era before forced induction found its way into everything. It featured a beefed up 6.5L M119 V8 that supposedly made 450hp. This might not seem like much these days with 1500hp hypercars, but back in 1997 that was serious power, especially in a sedan.

Some two-seat Mercedes. Heading out to The Narrow Roads, which keys are you grabbing?

There’s the Pagani section that I glossed over. One Pagani is great; two are good; more than that is just too much.

Then I finally decided to go into the Koenigsegg section that I had walked by a couple times. You have to be a real connoisseur to recognize the differences between each Koenigsegg model. For example, here you see the nearly identical Vader and Thor; they are actually different versions of the Agera (which itself has several variants).

And this is a Sadair’s Spear, which is a version of the Jesko. To me that’s the comical part of hypercars: the clever brands like Koenigsegg and Pagani have figured out how to print money by exploiting the innate desire of billionaires to be unique. At some point the concept of “spending money” becomes irrelevant, because literally any fool can spend billions of dollars on some folly; what’s important to billionaires is buying something that other people can’t buy. That’s exactly why they don’t just make a Jesko (which has two versions with total production of 125); they also used the same platform to make the same-but-slightly-different CC850 (70), Sadair’s Spear (30), and Chimera (just one). Don’t even get me started on the Agera, which had five regular models and sixteen (!) unique special editions.

People talk shit about Porsches and the current obsession with PTS colors and leather-wrapped air vents and dealer markups, which is all true. However, every time I go to a track day I see a current-generation 911 GT3 RS. Not once in my entire life have I ever seen someone drive their Bugatti, Koenigsegg, or Pagani to the track, let alone on a track day. However, if you’re going to buy some automotive jewelry, you could certainly do worse than a Koenigsegg. The rear suspension alone is a work of art.

Not many people get the chance to look at this unique sticker, so I figured I would take a photo. It has warnings about what sort of curbs you can park next to, as well as battery related notices. In a way it seems sad that being parked for longer than one month is so common for these cars there is an advisory when you open the door, but then again does anyone buying a several million dollar car have less than a dozen cars anyway?

Then there was the HWA Evo. The engineering on this car is extremely impressive, although I don’t particularly like the headlights or even the wide body in general. I still have never even driven an original 190E; I would love to drive one back to back with an HWA Evo and compare them. Conceptually, the idea of making the ultimate 190E is very cool, but it does make you wonder why the automotive industry can’t (or won’t) make a brand new car that delivers the driving experience of a restomod.

Some kind of new Miata? Actually, that’s a Guntherwerks Porsche 911.

Ooh, a Maserati Shamal. These are extremely rare over here because although they were made from 1990 to 1996, only 369 were sold and all of them in Europe. The most interesting part is they had a 3.2L V8 with twin turbos and a 6 speed manual gearbox. The sad part is they had the same body and interior as the much maligned Biturbo model, which was beautiful but poorly built, and equipped with the legendarily unreliable twin-turbo V6.

By this point the spectators had been trickling in and the weather was heating up. I always love watching other people’s photoshoots and imagining their lives. This guy has reached a respectable age and yet, he’s still out there doing the photo squat, taking photos of his elegant partner in front of equally elegant classic cars. How cool!

I also enjoy seeing “influencers in the wild”. As a creative person myself, I support everyone’s creative impulses. I don’t really care if what they’re making is any good or not; I just like seeing the effort. I also used to admire the boldness of people essentially making an ass of themselves while taking a photo or doing a piece to camera, but sadly with the advent of “vlogging” and short form social media videos, people are way too willing to do stupid shit in public and film it, so the shine has worn off that aspect for me.

These early Corvettes are just so pretty. I love the mesh screen over the headlights.

Due to my diligent nature, I still hadn’t shot everything in the show yet, but I was definitely flagging by this point. I actually walked right past this 1937 Ford earlier in the day to look at the 911 with the hand-painted art, but didn’t get a picture. This is exactly why I do multiple laps over a day; the light conditions change, people move, and sometimes the cars move too, with their hoods or doors or other panels opening and closing.

Speaking of which, I had to go back to the F40, which was now completely closed up. It’s funny to see the US version of this car, with the thick “mustache” front bumper trim with amber reflector…

…and the utterly ridiculous motorized seatbelts, put in place to satisfy the US regulation at the time for a mandatory passive safety restraint.

There were a lot of cars here that I just skipped entirely. Normally at this point in a car show, with the crowds increasing, I go back around the venue for a specific loop where I try to demonstrate exactly how busy the show is. Instead, I was walking toward the exit.

I love to shoot crowds looking at cars, or even people just interacting with vendors. This Piaggio Ape was hosting Dos Hombres, which is a tequila and mezcal brand from Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston. Even more wild than Breaking Bad alcohol, though, is what I learned about Piaggio: the Ape, which entered production in 1948, is still made today! They even used to make a four-wheeled version called the Ape Poker.

On my way out I stopped by the F1 section to gawk one more time and grab a few more snaps of the F399. Earlier you may have noticed that behind this section were two cars under black covers.

Well, I just so happened to be standing right there when the wraps came off: they brought back the Oldsmobile Aerotechs!

There’s an article in Road & Track that does a great job explaining the mystery of these cars; in short, after setting the closed-course speed record of 257 mph, General Motors ordered the cars to be destroyed.

Of course, like many prototypes, that didn’t exactly happen. The cars disappeared and everyone assumed they were lost–until a few years ago.

They hadn’t been stored as complete cars; original pieces were mixed in with tons of spare parts.

They had enough to rebuild and restore both cars, and here they were in their first public outing since they ran back in the day (the three cars that were shown in the 90’s were apparently all new cars, distinct from these two originals).

The really cool part about the unveiling was that they had some of the original team members on hand (whose names I wasn’t paying attention to/forgot, for which I apologize), who not only hadn’t seen the car in decades, they had no idea the cars would even be at the show! During the Aerotech presentation, one engineer described being asked to show up at this event but he didn’t really know why he was invited–until just now when he saw the Aerotechs unveiled and then it clicked!

Well, I’m glad that ended on a high note. After not feeling well and enduring the harsh unaesthetic sunlight to see cars that didn’t really appeal to me greatly, I was just glad that I didn’t spend my own money to get into this event. However, the Aerotech presentation was truly special and really lifted my spirits.

The most encouraging thing about this event is how it feels like they aren’t satisfied with how it is: every year the show gets bigger and better. There were approximately twice as many cars at this event as the previous year and I anticipate the 2026 event will be even better, so it’s definitely on my calendar and I’m already looking forward to it.