PHILPA 2013
I had the honour of being invited by PHILPA, the largest Antique Car Club of Greece, to be part of their Judging Panel for their '10th Concours d'Elegance 2013', held on Sunday 20 October 2013
The motto of Philpa is:
'Inspiring people to care about old cars in Greece since 1972'
Anna's superb 'period' picture of these two young ladies on a vintage Lambretta captured that spirit perfectly
Lentoudis Kriton's wonderful Miura SV won its Class and the overall prize. A magnificent Lamborghini and a great car guy
I would like to thank PHILPA for this invitation, and in particular its Board of Directors:
The President of PHILPA: Dimitris Vernardakis
The President of the'10th PHILPA Concours d'Elegance 2013' (and Electronic Media Officer): Byron E. Riginos
The Chief Judge of the Concours: Alex Vazeos
The Vice President (and fellow Judge and FIVA steward): Robert Smith
The Secretary General: Peter Matsoukis
The Treasurer: Stathis Filis
The Public Relations Officer: Peter Tsapepas
and John Asmatoglou (Publisher of 'The Philpa News' magazine & PHILPA House Supervisor), Nicholas Kontoyiannis, Takis Foteinopoulos, plus the Honorary Member: Costas Mitropoulos
Congratulations to them all for this splendid event!
This invitation was forwarded to me (and, I think, inspired) by the volcanic Alex Vazeos, a long time classic car collector of several obscure Italian makers (the ‘etceterinis’, as they call them) and a supporter for years of the Concorso d’Eleganza 'Villa D’Este'; he has been there 4 times so far, always with excellent jewel-like Italian cars of glorious firms like Bandini and Moretti. Here Alex is with his lovely wife Freda in a heavenly restaurant somewhere around Athens, where they invited Anna and me for lunch when we disembarked from our plane from Italy.
Alex was the Chief Judge during the '10th PHILPA Concours d'Elegance 2013' and his energy was indispensable to speed up the judges, who invariably end up, being car enthusiasts before anything else, to spend too much time savouring the details of those beautiful classics.
The Greek Tourist Office could do worse than enrole Alex as one of its top officers and testimonials. Thanks to its energy, enthusiasm and obvious knowledge of all the better things in life (and overall friendship) we fell in love with Greece, Greeks and Athens in less than 2 days. And I don't even want to begin to speak about his 'Scuderia Piccolino', it still gives me headache....
This wonderful Maserati 5000GT Allemano won my personal 'The Car That I Would Most Love To Take Home With Me' trophy .....
...while this beautiful young lady was obviously even more enthusiastic about a pretty E-Type Jaguar
Alex (right) and other Judges go through the papers of this splendid Jaguar
Form left to right Sotiris Petropoulos, me and Robert Smith, a FIVA steward and PHILPA Vice-President. Two great car guys.
Too bad that a Greek-registered Bristol 400 escaped Robert's effort to purchase her, or else the Bristol Owners' Club would have gained a new and extremely knowledgeable member
The judging process of the PHILPA Concours was similar to the one that we use in Villa d'Este: the most points (up to a max of 35) are allocated for elegance and style of the car, whilst less points are awarded for the condition or restoration quality, engine, interior, etc. This guarantees that the most elegant car will always have a significant advantage over a perfect restoration of a less impressive vehicle. That's the point of a 'Concours d'Elegance', after all
The cars shown at the Marina were all excellent, and some of them were frankly spectacular: a Maserati 5000GT Allemano was one of the stars together with the eventual overall winner, a spotless Lamborghini Miura SV, a breathtaking Ferrari 250GT Lusso, a perfect 275GTB/4, an astounding Mercedes 6,3 and the list could go on almost forever..... This Mistral Spider looked particularly fit for this spendid weather
The Marina where this Concours was held was nothing short of amazing; the yachts berthed there, spectacular. The Judges, obviously, enjoyed it very much
Reflections on Flisvos Marina
The event was blessed by splendid weather, sunny but not too hot, in a word: perfect. The Flisvos Marina was a perfect scenery for this Concours, and a classic-cars Concours is probably just as good for the Marina as well, as may vintage car collectors are wealthy owners of large yachts as well
I just LOVED this 'Oily Rag' Fiat Viotti....
This spotless Italian-registered Jaguar XK150 deservedly won her Class
I am very grateful to my wife Anna for the nice pictures that you see in this page: I couldn't take any as the judging process, although very pleasing, is (believe it or not) quite long and time-consuming
The 10th Philpa Concours d'Elegance was, I think, a smashing hit. Glamorous scenery, great collectors, superb cars and all the good stuff that we all love in great Car Concours. I hope that they will go on with this style, as this was a really nice week-end; as a Judge, I found many amazing cars to study and people to chat with. Finding them in Athens, the cradle of classic civilization, was very emotional for me, as I have ejoyed my classic Greek when I went through the Gymnasium
