7 Cars You Won’t Want to Miss at the 70th Annual Hillsborough Concours

According to the Savoy Automobile Museum’s display placard in front of a 1932 Rolls-Royce 20/25, one owned by famed gentleman racer Woolf Barnato, the 20/25 model from the revered British marque was for the customer who wanted to be behind the wheel and not transported about in the back seat. A successor to the Rolls-Royce 20 H.P. (aka “the Twenty”), which was introduced in 1922 and powered by a straight-six engine, the 20/25 arrived seven years later.

It’s no surprise that a model of this pedigree would draw an A-list clientele, and this specific 1933 example was commissioned by Arthur Jeffress, one of London’s gentry and Rolls-Royce’s version of a Bentley Boy—except without the racing. His notoriety was from being one of a collective of fast-living creatives of the day, sensationally referred to as “the Bright Young Things.” Considering that moniker, how could Jeffress drive anything less.

The marque that launched the entire automotive market, Mercedes-Benz has been actively advancing car design and performance since the turn of last century. At the vanguard of both when introduced in 1936 was the German automaker’s 540 K, and the example that will grace the Hillsborough show lawn is fit for a king, literally.

With baronial bodywork by the coachbuilding team at Mercedes-Benz’s own Sindelfingen facility, and equipped with a supercharged 5.4-liter straight-eight engine delivering a max output of 180 hp, this particular car was made to order for the ruler of Romania at the time, King Carol II. After being passed down to his son, who succeeded him on the throne, the vehicle went off the radar during World War II, though known to have been confiscated by the Russian military at some point. The 21st century has proven far safer for this 540 K Roadster, which has resided in the Keller Collection since 2015.

Although well-heeled motorists in the United States have always been enamored with the latest in both speed and agility, they were largely limited to European models when it came to true automotive athleticism until 1953. That’s the year the Chevrolet Corvette was unveiled, quickly earning the epithet “America’s Sports Car.” And while the current eighth generation of the ‘Vette has more styling cues in common with supercars from across the pond, the original is sporty elegance incarnate.

The restomod artisans at Utah-based Kindig-it Design seem to agree, as this reimagined 1953 Corvette tribute attests. Dubbed the CF1, it has a custom chassis from the Roadster Shop as its foundation, which is then fit with a 670 hp V-8—from Michigan’s Lingenfelter Performance Engineering—mated to an automatic transmission and complemented by a Borla exhaust setup. Naturally, the entire presentation is dressed in carbon-fiber.

Haven’t seen, or even heard of, this concours entry? Well, we would be surprised if you had, as this is a singular build by Miroslav Jurca, a Renaissance man. According to the 2014 lot description for the car from Mecum Auctions, the party offering it during Monterey Car Week that year, Jurca was forced by the communist government he was under to work for Czech aircraft company Avia.

This project may have been a statement of independence as he crafted it with aluminum from the job site. He initially gave it an air-cooled, 750 cc BMW R75 flat-twin bike engine paired with a four-speed manual transmission, though it now runs with a 1969 BMW R75/5 mill. The unique machine has been shown at Pebble and the Quail, and has been campaigned in various historic-racing competitions—an enduring display of Jurca’s ability to powerfully overcome adversity.

As it makes our short list of most beautiful production cars ever made, the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL “Gullwing” has to be included here. The 1950s-era coupe was born from the SL 300 race car from 1952, which was internally designated the W 194. The visually compelling coupe was revealed at the 1954 International Motor Sports Show in New York, and stateside demand never let its foot off the gas. “In 1954 and 1955 alone, 85 percent of the 300 SL Coupe models (850 of 996 vehicles) produced over this two-year period were exported to the United States of America,” stated a retrospective press release from Mercedes-Benz in 2021. And the car lived up to its Le Mans–winning roots, delivering 212 hp and a top speed of almost 162 mph.

According to the Hillsborough team, the example that will be present Sunday has been the subject of an on-again-off-again restoration spanning two decades and two different owners. It has since participated in numerous editions of the Colorado Grand Rally, and has been under its current stewardship since last year.

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Although overshadowed when the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Roadster debuted in 1957, the BMW 503 model, designed by Albrecht Graf Goertz, is a droptop that, despite its understated refinement, has a commanding presence that demands a lingering look. And while only 139 roadsters were produced from 1956 through 1960, just 58 examples of the Series II Cabriolet were made. Fit with a 140 hp, 3.2-liter V-8 engine, the car is touted as the first convertible from Germany to have a power-activated system for opening and closing the roof, as noted by a lot description for an example sold 12 years ago through RM Sotheby’s for 196,000 British pounds.

Chassis No. 69283, set to appear at the Hillsborough exhibition, underwent a three-year restoration after three decades of being sequestered in lackluster fashion at a property in Ohio. Subsequent awards at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance and the Amelia concours reflect its newfound glory. After all, nobody puts this baby in a corner.

Perhaps no other car embodies the word “maverick” and conjures such an immediate association to its maker than Carroll Shelby’s eponymous Cobra. Shelby gave the  performance needle a shove in 1962 when he planted a small-block Ford V-8 into a diminutive chassis from British automaker AC. According to Shelby American, this first iteration weighed only 2,020 pounds and cost just under $6,000 when new. Shelby next modified the model to accommodate Ford’s larger 427 FE mill, the results of which continue to fuel a cottage industry of continuation cars and replicas today.

The 1966 example heading to the Hillsborough show lawn, however, is the real deal. Owned by Richard Minton, it remarkably wears the same body, chassis, and power plant that the Shelby team initially sent it out into the world with. Almost as impressive is the fact that it has only 18,066 miles on it.

Click here for more preview photos of the 2026 Hillsborough Concours d’Elegance.