With the Pebble Beach/Monterey weekend over now for another year, Classic Driver was fortunate in having John Mayston-Taylor of Lynx, Stateside, with the fabulous, yellow, ‘Yamaha’ Ford GT40. John found time to describe some of the sights and sounds of one of the world’s premier events. Over to JMT -

“The event itself was as spectacular as ever with the featured marque of Bugatti and Ford. The GT40 line-up of seven examples, representing one of each body style was unique and impressive with the Pacific Ocean as a backdrop. Our GT40 (1077), the ex-Yamaha car, created a lot of interest, especially for the many Japanese visitors to the event. Following the Concours, the GT40 was immediately de-commissioned and taken up to San Francisco early on Monday morning where it was loaded in a passenger Virgin 747 bound for London and preparing for the Goodwood Revival Meeting, where I shall be driving in the Whitsun Trophy race. Quite a schedule this year! .

The Bugattis were plentiful and of course beautifully presented, with a Bugatti Atlantique winning Best of Show. In fact they had both surviving cars here, with Ralph Lauren's being a former Best of Show car. The weather was overcast and cool for most of the day, but with the sun shining periodically.

At Laguna Seca, Ford put on a very impressive static display with Jackie Stewart in attendance. There was also a Bugatti race with over thirty five examples competing! Bentley also had a strong presence with the new Continental GT and Derek Bell.

The Concorso Italiano was interesting at the new location, but was felt by many that the logistics for parking has to be improved. Another event on Friday was the new one at Quail. It was a concours judged by the entrants together with a selection of race cars driven (with a police escort) from the track. The food was superb in picnic style prepared by Bernadus. The organisers had even arranged helicopters to shuttle the drivers to and from the circuit during the day! Altogether a very successful event enjoyed by all and I'm sure it will grow from strength to strength.

The auctions were a little mixed I believe. I did not attend Bonhams , and have not spoken about it with anybody, so I cannot report on that. The RM auction was active with a good overall percentage both in volume and value. Although I didn't manage to attend Christie's following the Concours (too much to do with the GT40), I understand that it was not as successful, with a number of cars failing to reach reserve. The Ford GT at Christie’s was one of the highest sellers at over US$500,000 for charity, together with the Ferrari 365 California Spyder also at over US$500,000.

I am sure your readers would have enjoyed all the activities, which are so different in style to Europe. You should definitely put it on your list!”

Editor’s note: John Mayston-Taylor’s Lynx Motors company is best known for their work on Jaguars, including the Lynx Lightweight E and XKSS models, as well as having restored several of the original l/w E-types and many Cs and Ds. They also carry out ground up restorations on other marques as shown by the 'Yamaha' GT40, the Aston Martin DB4GT and their current, recently completed project - the most gorgeous Ferrari 250GT Lusso. Their Turbo-Virage Aston Martin is well known and formed the basis of an article on Classic Driver earlier this year.

John will be racing the GT40 at the Goodwood Revival next month in the Whitsun Trophy for sports-racing cars of the period which includes Ferrari 250LMs, McLaren M1s and of course several examples of Ford’s finest racing car.

To see the full list of cars for sale at Lynx please CLICK HERE.