CAR SHOWS:The Salon Privé is the world's most exclusive car show and it's a world away from the global recession, as MARK NICHOLfinds out
LAST YEAR’S Salon Privé had an anachronistic air. Set against a landscape of recession and fiscal panic, here was an alternative landscape of four-wheeled decadence. And a lobster barbecue, obviously.
This year not much has changed, except now our financial situation is understood a little more clearly.
The shock of the world’s credit card bill has dissipated, and now were all ready to tighten our belts. Heck, we’ve even got a name for this new phase of responsibility.
But here, inside the gated community of London’s Hurlingham Club, where the fifth annual Salon Privé is taking place, the age of austerity is as much a reality as the ice age.
You’d think the organisers might at least nod to the outside world – put some frozen prawns on the barbecue, perhaps – but no. And why should they? Far from shrinking like a county council’s road repair budget, the Salon Privé is burgeoning.
The 2010 event is the biggest yet, selling out and seeing over 4,000 visitors flooding though the gates over three days. At up to £295 (€360) per ticket, too.
So, with a captive audience of thousands, all willing to pay handsomely for the privilege (uncouth motoring hacks excepted, of course), you can see why manufacturers are keen to get involved; Audi and Lexus turned up for the first time this year.
What they turned up to is, essentially, the second half of the two-part replacement for the defunct British Motor Show. Goodwood’s Moving Motor Show is the shop window, the Salon Privé the sales office.
At the 2009 event, for instance, Jaguar gave the new XJ luxury limo its public debut and pitched a representative with the car to gather information from those poking around the interior. That never used to happen at the Birmingham motor show.
But it’s not all champagne and sales assistants. In fact, behind the façade of cocktail dresses and the vague whiff of inconspicuous celebrity presence, beats the heart of genuine automotive enthusiasm. The Salon Privé really is a car person’s wet dream.
This year there are no world debuts to speak of, but, honestly, given the choice between Korea’s latest crossover and a 320km/h six-wheeler from the naïve excess of Britain in the 1970s, we know which you’re more likely to gawk at.
The Panther 6 was a complete sales non-starter, of course, but the example at the Salon Privé – one of only two ever produced – is exactly the sort of fantastical rarity the event attracts.
Then there’s the Bugatti Type 41 Royale, a car as majestic as it is enormous, dwarfing even the Rolls-Royce Phantom. It too failed, as it happens, conceived just before the Great Depression of the early 1930s.
The Royale is part of the Concours dElégancecompetition – the centrepiece of the event. Separated into seven categories, including those dedicated to Jaguar, Alfa Romeo, Maserati and Bugatti, it showcases some of the best examples of the finest cars on the planet.
Rowan Atkinson’s McLaren F1 is among them – chassis 61, to be precise – which ends up winning the 200mph+ Hypercars category, as judged by Jaguar design chief Ian Callum and Aston Martin Racing boss David Richards, among others.
Next to that lot, the Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupé – complete with bespoke picnic set – and the new Ghost, aka the Baby Rolls, both look positively parsimonious.
For every modern hypercar on display, counted among them the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG and Lexus LFA, there’s a progenitor from a bygone era.
A Bugatti EB110 GT takes part in the Concours; there’s a Ferrari F40; a Jaguar XJ220 not too far away; and a Jaguar D Type in another spot.
Actually, Jaguar’s presence is an admirable effort, cataloguing the firm’s 75-year history with an array of historic cars up to and including the current XJ limo.
Oddly there’s no X-Type - which makes its own statement – but there is an XJ220, a 1936 SS100, a 1961 E-Type (obviously) and a 1952 XK120.
Those with more modern automotive predilection can get their kicks from the new Bentley Continental Supersports, a carbon-infused gentlemanly lunatic that can crack 100km/h in just 3.7 seconds. Or there’s the Lamborghini Gallardo LP570-4 Superleggera which is even quicker, louder and, in this company, frankly quite uncouth.
Yet while the Salon Privé may be the world’s least carbon efficient garden party, it does have its token gesture to the eco effort. Situated amid the stalls of watch sellers and champagne makers is a man called Lionel Virdee.
Lionel is the show’s token environmentalist. He takes what the rich throw away, re-uses it and sells it back to them. He is the Tyler Durden of design, except without the nihilistic tendency or any hint of irony.
His business began when he crafted a table from a Porsche 911 GT3 alloy he had lying around. There began a business refurbishing old car parts and turning them into luxury furniture. Fancy a clock fashioned from a Ferrari 430 Scuderia’s brake disc and calliper? It’s yours for €4,250.
And what better way to measure the age of austerity than to do so using a recycled clock?
