#ConcoursD'Elegance

If you were hoping to browse the mouth-watering classics at this year’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, don’t break out the collared shirts just yet. The event has been cancelled for the same reason everything else you wanted to do is now impossible. Pebble Beach officials have decided to nix the show, originally scheduled for August 16th, rather than risk the health of entrants, judges, and volunteers.

“My heart goes out to all of the people who are involved in the Pebble Beach Concours and who are impacted by this decision,” said Concours Chairman Sandra Button for the announcement. “Many of our entrants have been working on a special car for years, and this was to be their moment. Some of our overseas entrants were nearing the point of putting their cars on boats and planes, and their own travel arrangements have long been made. The same is true for many of our international cadre of judges.”

To paraphrase former editor of GOOD, Cord Jefferson, we Millennials are cold-blooded killers. Whether it’s due to lack of income or interest, few industries have been unaffected by our non-traditional spending habits. The auto industry has been especially vulnerable; I have attended academic conferences and read countless thinkpieces theorizing ways to motivate Millennials to fall in love with automobiles like their parents did. Finding buyers for all of these future cars will be tricky, but there’s a greater problem: If nobody in my generation cares for cars, who will do the work to design them?

Even more bleak are the prospects for students who are actually passionate about automobiles. One current transportation design student told me it is easier to get picked for NFL draft than it is to get a job designing cars for a major automaker. In the past, two schools dominated auto design education in America: Detroit’s College for Creative Studies and Pasadena’s ArtCenter College of Design. Today, graduates from these prestigious (and expensive) schools have to compete against a global talent pool, all vying for a limited number of internships.

With such overwhelming odds stacked against them, who would even encourage a prospective student to apply?

This is at least my third, maybe the fourth, attempt at writing a post explaining why, if you’re a car enthusiast of any stripe, you owe it to yourself to attend a first rate concours. I first started writing it after seeing a real baby seal Jaguar D Type, the kind of car that you would normally only see in photos, videos or in museums, actually being driven after the end of the Concours of America at St John’s last year. Okay, so the D Type was being driven off the show field to a trailer in the parking lot but it was still being driven. Still, after those attempts, I just didn’t think I was doing the subject justice so I never submitted any of them for publication.