2009 Pebble Beach Best of Show, new cars from Bentley, Spyker, Devon and Bugatti ...

[Wouter Melissen]

Yesterday the most coveted award in the classic car world - the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance 'Best of Show' - was handed out for the 59th time. Usually the honorary judges have a tough time picking the outright winner but this year this Horch 853 stood out. Not because the competition was not very strong but because it combined exceptional elegance with an immaculate condition. The highly exclusive coachwork was originally crafted by Voll & Ruhrbeck in Berlin and is adorned with tasteful chrome touches. The single biggest strip of chrome on the car is 11 feet in length and is part of a line that runs all around the Sport Cabriolet body. Unfortunately relatively little is known about the car's early history as all the Voll & Ruhrbeck records were destroyed during a bombing raid in the War. The exquisite machine did survive as it had left Germany for France before 1940. As a warm-up to our complete coverage of the Concours d'Elegance and the Tour d'Elegance to be published later this week, we have taken a closer look at the Horch 853 Voll & Ruhrbeck Sport Cabriolet with a spectacular 18-shot gallery.
Ahead of the award show the crowds at Pebble were treated to the world debut of the all-new Bentley Mulsanne. Replacing the Arnage, it is the first top-of-the-range Bentley developed under the current ownership. The new Phantom / Maybach rival combines updated styling with a fully redeveloped 6.75 litre twin-turbo V8 engine. Behind the Pebble lodge three more world debuts were lined up. Spyker brought the first prototype of the C8 Aileron Spyder. Similarly styled as the coupe launched earlier this year, the show car features some nice details like the leather suitcase mounted on top of the engine. An all new American manufacturer, Devon Motorworks, also joined the fray with their rather wild, V10-engined GTX. Celebrating the company's centenary, Bugatti was one of the featured marques at Pebble. The French supercar builder has quickly built up a reputation of wasting no opportunities to produce a special version of the Veyron. Here they showed the rather nice Grand Sport Sang Bleu, which has bare carbon fibre panels with a blue hue.

Enjoy the links:

2010 Bentley Mulsanne - Images, Specifications and Information

2009 Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Sang Bleu - Images, Specifications and Information

2010 Devon GTX - Images, Specifications and Information

1935 - 1937 Horch 853 Voll & Ruhrbeck Sport Cabriolet - Images, Specifications and Information

2010 Spyker C8 Aileron Spyder - Images, Specifications and Information

[digitalcraft]

The GTX looks a bit like a TVR, is there any connection?

[f6fhellcat13]

The Devon looks stunning!
Hell, all those cars, save the Mulsanne, look pretty damn good.

[cmcpokey]

the Devon is fast too.. they drove it around laguna on saturday, and it sounds fantastic.