1956 Ferrari 250GT TdF wins Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este

Words: Elliott Hughes | Photography: Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este

World-class collector cars returned to the shores of Lake Como in Italy on October 1-3, 2021 for this year’s Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este. The event is one of Europe’s foremost concours d’elegance, and is described by the organisers as “a celebration of elegance and timeless beauty on four wheels”.

The Villa d’Este Prelude Tour, which was successfully trialled back in 2019, returned to kick off the main concours event. The tour is a similar concept to Pebble Beach’s Tour d’Elegance, with a cavalcade of cars taking a pre-planned route from Cernobbio to Como.

Once the concours began, it was a 1956 Ferrari 250GT TdF Coupé that eventually rose to the top of the carefully curated field of 50 cars. The rare Ferrari won its class before bagging the coveted Trofeo BMW Group award for Best of Show on Sunday.

Ironically, the winning Ferrari is the seventh Italian car in succession to receive the Trofeo BMW Group award, with Alfa Romeo and Maserati being the only other marques to emerge victorious since Bugatti in 2013.

The Ferrari 250GT TdF presented at the event was the second Tour de France model produced by Maranello. The car was intended to compete in the legendary Tour de France automobile race during the 1950s, which meant that it was built with lightweight aluminium bodywork and the fabled 3.0-litre Colombo V12 engine.

Another 250GT TdF model won the 1956 Tour de France, while the Concorso d’Eleganza winner was entered into the Mille Miglia on the day it was registered. After taking part in this famous race of attrition, the car was campaigned successfully in European hillclimb events.

The car’s motor sport provenance and presentation impressed the jury panel, which said that the car’s “perfectly restored condition means that we can only imagine the challenges this automobile survived in the course of its campaigns”.

Many tipped the famous 1971 Lamborghini LP500 prototype as a shoo-in for Best of Show, after it was announced that the car would make its global debut at the Concorso d’Eleganza.

The LP500 was long believed to be lost to time after it was crashed three years after making its historic appearance at the 1971 Geneva Motor Show. Villa d’Este is the first time the car has been seen in decades, and follows a miraculous 25,000-hour restoration by Lamborghini’s Polo Storico heritage division.