2024 The Amelia
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2024 The Amelia
For this year's 2024 Amelia, the American Muscle Car Museum brought our 1956 Mercury XM Turnpike Cruiser. This is the only prototype created, built in Italy by Ghia in 1955. The exterior is in a Persimmon with a pearlescent topcoat and has transparent butterfly roof panels that open and close when the doors are used.
We are happy to announce that we won the Amelia Island Award! We were in a competitive American Limited Production class and are very grateful for the honor. The other Best in Class Winner in our American Limited Production class was a 1954 Packard Balboa, but the other cars were also incredibly deserving. Here is a look at our car, along with Mark and Tetiana Pieloch accepting the award on behalf of the museum.
Our last post about Amelia is about the Concours itself. Over 27,000 people attended the Sunday show despite the threat of heavy rains. Two hundred eighty-five cars were in the Concours field, competing in dozens of different classes. Some classes included the Cars of Pikes Peak, Japanese Performance Cars of the 90's, and the 100th Anniversary of Bugatti Grand Prix Cars class. This year's honoree was Rick Hendrick, and many of his Hendrick Motorsports cars were in attendance.
While it did rain for an extended period, the awards still went off, just not with the owners driving their cars up to accept the award. As mentioned earlier, we won The Amelia Award with our 1956 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser and competed in the American Limited Production Class. The Best of Show Concours de Sport winner was a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO, and a 1947 Delahaye 135MS Narval Cabriolet took home Best in Show for the Concours d’Elegance.
Huge thanks to everyone who participated in the Concours and to our judges for all of the fantastic cars. Over 500 volunteers also worked in the rain to make this event possible. Thanks to Hagerty, specifically Vito Vacca, Sammi Caruso, and countless others for their help before and throughout the event. We hope to see everyone next year!