Le Mans-winning Ferrari and rare French car win Amelia Island
This year’s Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance (officially referred to as The Amelia, now) has crowned its two best in show vehicles. The event has a traditional best in show award for road cars as well as one for race cars called Concours de Sport. The winner of the Concours d’Elegance award went to a 1935 Voisin C-25 Aerodyne, and the Concours de Sport award went to a Le Mans-winning 1964 Ferrari 250 LM. Both cars are quite interesting for different reasons.
The reasons for why the Voisin is interesting are obvious just by looking at it. The C-25 line was launched in 1934, and the Aerodyne was one of three variants. Like other Voisins, the Aerodyne featured bold art deco design inside and out. It also had a huge power retractable hardtop that would slide back along the semi-circle roofline. Though Voisin reportedly built more than 10,000 cars through the 1920s and 1930s, fewer than 150 remain, and just 4 of the six C-25 Aerodynes built remain. This one as well as a Pebble Beach-winning example are owned by the Mullins of the Mullin Automotive Museum.
As for the Ferrari, it’s one mighty scrappy underdog of a race car. That may seem a bit odd to say about a mid-century Ferrari, but this one was not campaigned by the factory. Rather, this one was raced by the North American Race Team (NART), a privateer group started by Luigi Chinetti. And the team managed to win Le Mans overall in 1965, beating out GT40s just before their dominant reign at Le Mans. But that wasn’t the only time it competed in top-tier endurance races. The 250 ran Le Mans two more times in 1968 and 1969, and it also raced at the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1966, 1968 and 1970. This car is currently owned by the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum.
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