With the new year well under way, chances are a number of you are already putting together a list of potential must-attend 2011 events. Here’s one you can add to that list: the 16th Annual Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance. One aspect of this year’s event is a display celebrating the 100th anniversary of Chevrolet, which will include an appearance by the famed 1955 Chevy Biscayne concept car, courtesy of noted collector Joe Bortz; he was also responsible for its painstaking restoration. The functional fiberglass-bodied car was part of the GM Motorama show circuit, and it also doubled as a platform for the debut of the 215hp, 265-cu.in. V-8 engine.
Another legendary car scheduled to make an appearance at Amelia is the Mormon Meteor, a 1935 Duesenberg built in an effort to set land speed records at the Bonneville Salt Flats, with Ab Jenkins behind the wheel. Once dubbed the “fastest, most powerful car in the world,” the streamlined Model J chassis – with a supercharged, 400hp Model SJ engine, and later a 1,600-cu.in. Curtis Conqueror V-12 – set no less than three distance/speed records. Subscribers of our Hemmings Classic Car title may remember the tale of its amazing restoration in HCC #39, December 2007, written and photographed by our very own David LaChance.
The Amelia Island Concours is scheduled for March 11-13, and will be held on the grounds of The Golf Club of Amelia Island at Summer Beach in Amelia Island, Florida.