Concours D'elegance ─ Dream Cars and Lovely Ladies

The vital step for organisers of such events was to choose a venue famous for its air of leisurely hedonism, such as Longchamp, Deauville, Cannes, La Baule, Vichy, Nice or Enghien, where costly automobiles, their elegant silhouettes crafted by the great names of contemporary coachwork, could parade. To enhance the atmosphere, these exotic creations were presented by pretty ladies, mostly recruited from fashionable society, dressed in the latest fashion by the leading Parisian couturiers in an attempt to achieve the best possible symbiosis with the machines that they accompanied.

Without wishing to diminish the important role played in the spectacle by these ladies, it was of course the aristocratic automobiles that the eager spectators had come to admire.

This book offers a delicious journey back in time to witness the golden age of the concours d’elegance. Over fifty coachbuilders are represented in the photographs and an idex is provided.

Patrick Lesueur, born in the quiet village of Brunoy on the outskirts of Paris in 1952, has motoring in his blood. His grandfather, a personal friend of Gabriel Voisin and Andre Citroen, was Cesar Marchand, who between 1925 and 1937 broke some 85 per cent of all existing endurance records. After graduating from the Beaux-arts in Paris in 1970, Patrick began drawing illustrated strips for the popular magazine Pilote. He remained with that company until the mid-1980s, producing some fifty books. In the 1990s Patrick started writing for classic car magazines, with particular emphasis on American cars, especially the products of the Ford Motor company – he owns a 1952 Lincoln Capri hardtop. However, most of the twenty books he has written for French publisher etai have been about popular French cars.