Founded in 1883, the Radnor Hunt is the oldest foxhunt in the United States. Located since the 1930s in Chester County, west of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the 100 acre grounds have been the home of the Radnor Hunt Concours d'Elegance since 1997. The aim of the organizers was to stage an elegant invitational classic car event, limited to 100 entries, on the historic grounds, and giving the ambiance of an English garden party with a balance between historic, classic, sports and performance racing cars. The 2016 event marked the Concours' 20th Anniversary and special attention was paid to Lancia automobiles, as well as motorcycles.
As is often the case with a Concours event, the day before the judged show (invariably a Sunday), there is an informal Cars & Coffee event, allowing people with "special interest autos" the chance to show off their pride and joys, have a coffee and doughnut, and chat with other owners before driving off before lunch. Typically, there are lots of late model sports cars (including Corvettes, of course) but many vintage cars as well. At the Radnor Hunt Saturdays feature the Chester County Road Rally. This was supposed to start at 8:00 am, and the Cars & Coffee at 8:30, but there was a whole heap of confusion this year and the rally did not seem to really get going until closer to 10:30, with a lot of delays and idling cars. No matter. It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed the Cars & Coffee very much. In addition to some very interesting old Lancias, there were some new McLarens brought in by the local dealership, as well as old BMWs, hot rods, a resto-modded 1940s Cadillac, and other novelties.
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| Our Corvette: the only car present from Canada! |
After enjoying our coffee and walking around the parked cars, we found some interesting vintage cars that were about to head off to the rally, although that turned out to be a very slow undertaking. In addition to a huge unrestored Packard touring car, manned by that rare commodity at these shows--Young People, there was also an excellent Stutz Blackhawk open car, with a large stuffed gorilla in the back seat. We spoke with the owner and his wife for a while; the Stutz is an impressive car and this one had just had an engine overhaul. Neither it nor the Packard were Concours cars but it was great to see them on the road in motion. The only other period car was a very nice V-8 Cadillac. We positioned ourselves in a strategic location across the street and watched the rally participants head out.
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| Packard rolling out |
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| Stutz Blackhawk with owners and gorilla |
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| Cadillac V-8 roadster |
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| MGA |
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| Shelby 427 Cobra replica |
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| Two BMW 2002s meeting! |
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| Lotus Elan |
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| Ferrari 599 |
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| Aston Martin Vantage |
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| Rally participants hurry up and wait... |
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| BMW 3.0 CS |
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| Rally participants waiting...and waiting...a Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder leads out an Audi TT (that went on to win the rally), followed by a Shelby GT350 Mustang and a Mercedes-Benz 190Sl ahead of the white BMW M3. |
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| Rally participants still waiting... |
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| The first Tesla X SUV we had ever seen |
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| Morgan Plus 4 |
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| 1946 Lancia Aprilia Pagani Barchetta Corsa, a one-off built by the Riva company in aluminum |
After watching this very rare white Lancia set out, another Lancia came in. Not a rally participant, this 1932 Lancia DiLambda Torpedo Sport would make its appearance as a show car on Sunday. Very elegant!
It was a great start to the weekend and we were excited about the excellent cars we would look at during the Concours itself on Sunday.
Leslie ~ That Cobra replica is a Superformance like mine. Brian
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