1937 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B wins 2018 Pebble Beach Concours Best in Show

All afternoon on the Sunday of the 2018 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, finalists from the various classes the competition crossed the podium stage in front of the Lodge at Pebble Beach. Class winners—including Motor Cars of the Raj, Tuckers, OSCAs, Prewar Preservation, and Packard—were announced, trophies were awarded, and many happy owners drove down the ramp and back onto the green. By 5:00 PM, three cars, each a finalist for the coveted Best in Show trophy, were poised to drive up the ramp—a 1937 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B; a 1929 Duesenberg J Murphy Town Limousine; and a 1948 Talbot Lago T26 Grand Sport Figoni Fastback Coupe—but only one would be summoned to center stage.

After the crowd quieted and the trumpets blared, concours director Sandra Kasky-Button stepped to the podium, opened the envelope, and, to no one’s surprise, announced that the 1937 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Touring Berlinetta would be crowned concours champion. 

Owned by longtime Los Angeles Alfa Romeo collectors David & Ginny Sydorick, the black-over-caramel Alfa Romeo was on the short list for Best in Show according to nearly everyone who’d strolled the concours lawn earlier in the day. The black bombshell hits all the high notes that tend to favor Pebble winners: prewar; European; stunning coachwork (in this instance by Carrozzeria Touring). Racing provenance certainly doesn’t hurt either.

This 8C is—as an ebullient David Sydorick noted after winning—essentially a Grand Prix car under an elegant Touring body. It was a technical tour de force in its day and a watershed design for both Alfa Romeo and Touring, which draped the 8C chassis with stunning Superleggera coachwork for the 1937 Paris Auto Salon. The car ended up in Germany and was brought to the United States in 1956. It was restored in the 1990s and was named Most Elegant Closed Car at the 2001 Pebble Beach Concours, so it already had a Pebble Beach pedigree. 

As yet another Pebble Beach Concours comes to a close, and there’s naught but stray champagne flutes and a dusting of confetti left on the lawn, we take our hats off to the Alfa 8C and its proud owners.