The Best Cars at The Bridge, From a Bugatti to Gordon Murray’s Latest

Where

With its ninth edition held this past weekend, The Bridge takes place at its eponymous 18-hole golf club in Bridgehampton, New York. It’s the former site of the iconic Bridgehampton Race Circuit, host to the Bridgehampton Sports Car Road Races from 1949 through 1953, and an active track for the better part of four decades after.

Who

Both the golf club and now-defunct racecourse share the common ground of ownership by Renaissance man and collector Robert Rubin (center), who cofounded the meticulously curated car show with Shamin Abas (right), president of her namesake communications and marketing firm, and Jeffrey Einhorn (left), a renowned car collector and attorney.

This year, over 300 vehicles graced select fairways, while the title sponsor was Mercedes-Maybach. Others supporting through sponsorship were Volvo, BMW, Gunther Werks, Arcade Cars, and Luminari Motor Company, to name a few.

Why

For Rubin, this annual assemblage of cars and community is of personal importance. “It certainly fits in the lineage of my interaction with this property,” Rubin tells Robb Report. “I’m conflicted about the fact that I was unable to keep the track going, so it’s a way of saying ‘thank you’ to the racers and thinking about what life was like in simpler times.”

The cars included are all selected by Rubin, Einhorn, and Abas, as are the attendees. When asked how the field has transformed through the years in response to a changing owner demographic, Rubin states; “I have been around long enough that I see how tastes in vintage cars have evolved, and it seems to be linked to the cars that you couldn’t afford. A sign of an advanced collector is a guy who is 35 and is interested in Edwardian cars—that’s the guy I’d like to meet. Someone who is expressing individuality through their cars.”  

Importantly, there’s no judging component to The Bridge, so no Best of Show or class winners, allowing those presenting to just relax and enjoy the event, which Rubin defines as “a garden party for gearheads.” And when queried about the next generation’s interest in automobiles, he is unequivocally optimistic—“cars will never lose their appeal.” Here, seven dream machines that definitively prove Rubin’s point.

1928 Bugatti Type 40 Grand Sport

Among the earliest automobiles at The Bridge this year was this 1928 Bugatti Type 40 Grand Sport, a boattail variant of the model. According to RM Sotheby’s, which sold a 1927 example for $362,500 in 2019, it’s commonly held that a little less than 800 examples of the Type 40 were produced after it debuted in 1926. The car on display, though, chassis No. 40347, was sold through Bonhams in 2018 for €402,500 (approximately $473,700 by today’s conversion). It has subsequently changed hands again and been reunited with its original power plant.

“Back in the day, they just swapped parts here and there, but everything [in this car] is all etched and stamped with the same number,” says current owner Richard Pineda, who acquired it in 2023. “Now it is fully back to its original form in 1928, when it was born.” That includes the matching-numbers engine that Pineda located and had restored, a project that took a year and a half alone. He goes on to note that the car was first registered in the United Kingdom on the day after the New York Stock Market collapse triggered the Great Depression. As for the drive experience, “there is not one automobile that feels more connected and raw,” says Pineda, who, along with his wife Kate, plan to embrace that impressively visceral experience when they pilot it in next year’s Mille Miglia.

1956 Ford Thunderbird

There was plenty of automotive Americana showcased at The Bridge, from muscle cars to classic tourers, but one domestic stunner that captivated us was this 1956 Ford Thunderbird dressed in a striking Peacock blue. According to an historical overview of the model from Ford Motor Company itself, “the design objectives included a weight of 2,525 pounds, an Interceptor V-8 engine, a balanced weight distribution, acceleration better than the competition, and a top speed of more than 100 miles per hour.” The Thunderbird debuted at the 1954 Detroit Auto Show, reached the market later in the year, had a race version competing in NASCAR before the end of the decade, and continued in various iterations until just prior to the end of the millennium.

“I worked at a gas station at [age] 14 . . . my big boss had a ’56 Chevy and his brother had a ’57 Thunderbird, and I just fell in love with the Thunderbird,” says owner Tom Nawrocki of Westhampton. “I bought one when I was still in college and tried to restore it, but just didn’t have any money to do it. Later on, my wife got pregnant with my son, and I said, ‘I need a project to put me in the garage on rough days.’ I did a chassis-off [restoration] in my garage, took every bolt out of this car . . . I had everything cadmium plated . . . this car will never rust.” Nawrocki admits that, because he’s tall, driving his Thunderbird “is not the most comfortable . . . my leg is hitting the steering wheel when I’m operating the clutch. But you know what? It doesn’t matter.”

1958 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider

A car that imported Italy’s ethos of effortless and carefree glamor to the United States, the Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider was the brainchild of highly successful stateside dealer Max Hoffman, as were several models from different marques during that period. Designed by Franco Martinengo of Pinin Farina, the shapely machine was introduced with an inline-four engine good for about 65 hp, which allows for a top speed of roughly 96 mph.

The example that was on the 18th fairway at The Bridge is owned by Shayan Bokaie, whose stewardship carries on a family tradition. “My great uncle owned the exact spec that I have, in Iran, and my grandfather had a white one of the same year in Iran, which he had won in a game of poker with the Shah of Iran’s brother, so the heritage of Alfa Romeo runs very deep,” says Bokaie. “The color [Celeste] is like la dolce vita, and the Hamptons is the la dolce vita of America, in my opinion, so it all comes together.” When asked what it’s like behind the wheel, Bokaie mentions that it’s “joyful and plenty . . . it’s like 80 hp, so not fast, but getting to highway speed is so pleasurable.”

1963 Abarth Simca 1300

Carlos Abarth launched his Italian marque in 1949, and soon took over the by-then-failing automaker Cisitalia and its lineup, with the Cisitalia-Abarth 204A subsequently making a name for itself in motorsport. A number of years later, another hyphenated model would emerge when “Simca sought to develop a car suitable for competitive racing,” to quote the RM Sotheby’s lot description for a 1963 Abarth-Simca 1300 GT Coupé it sold for €275,000 (approximately $323,500 by today’s conversion rate) in 2021. The temporary partnership between Abarth and the French carmaker resulted in a model that the Hellenic Motor Museum mentions weighs only 1,389 pounds and is powered by a 1,288 cc inline-four engine. The FIA Historic Database lists the homologation number for the Abarth-Simca 1300 to be 77 examples.

“I love Italian, Sixties cars and I’m really fascinated by the Targa Florio race in particular, and this car ran in the Targa Florio three times and has a lot of period racing history in Italy,” says New York–based owner Bradley Price. As Price explains, it had been on display in a museum and needed “a total mechanical overhaul” when he acquired it in 2019. “Now it’s done, and this is the first time it’s being shown, outside a local Cars & Coffee,” he says. “It’s a beautiful object, yes, but to have something that competed in all of these races that are legendary, to own a piece of that, was really something that drew me to the car.”

1972 Lola T310 Can-Am

As the Historic Can-Am Association (HCCA) documents, and whose legacy it keeps alive, the Canadian-American Challenge Cup Series was a motorsport sensation that ran from 1966 through 1974. British race-car manufacturer Lola was a powerhouse in the day, with entries not only in Can-Am competitions, but also in Formula 1 and the Indianapolis 500, among others. Per the field notes on the car that were supplied by The Bridge, the T310 was “one of the longest, widest, and lowest cars ever to compete in the Can-Am Series,” and was piloted by racer David Hobbs. The car was sold through Mecum Auctions in 2015, and the lot description states that it was also raced “by Jerry Hansen to first place in the ASR class at U.S. Champions Road Atlanta” and “competed in 1974 and 1976-77.”

Overseeing the two Lola cars he brought to the Bridge was owner Bruce Waller, who has had the T310 in his possession for a decade. “I always wanted one of these ‘thunder road’ cars that put out a lot of horsepower and are hard to drive,” Waller tells Robb Report. When asked to describe the sensation when he’s in the cockpit, Waller says, “It’s like being put into a rocket ship—it’s 1,000 hp, weighs 1,600 pounds, and has 900 ft lbs of torque . . . but it’s a wide car, so it has good handling.” One would certainly hope so. Yet along with the otherworldly drive dynamics, the car has a production provenance that’s equally compelling. “It’s one of one,” says Waller, adding that “it was the last Lola Can-Am car they built.”

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1976 Ferrari 308 GTB

Introduced at the 1975 Paris Salon, the Ferrari 308 Gran Turismo Berlinetta (GTB) stands out among the rest of the Prancing Horse’s production stable in that it was the marque’s initial model to be bodied primarily in fiberglass, though stateside versions would be a combination of steel and aluminum starting in 1976. Penned by Pininfarina and made by Scaglietti, the 308 GTB was originally equipped with a 255 hp, aluminum 3.0-liter V-8 mated to a synchromesh five-speed transmission. By the time Maranello stopped building the 308 GTB, a total of 2,897 examples had left the factory, one of which was presented at The Bridge by Robert Rubin, the event’s cofounder as well as the owner of the former Bridgehampton Race Circuit and what’s now the Bridge golf club.

“It was the road-going Ferrari that was for sale when I was in my twenties, and I wasn’t at the advanced stage where if it wasn’t twelve cylinders I didn’t want it,” says Rubin. “When I was looking for one car that was vintage, but not so vintage that it was terrifying to drive, I came up with this.” Yet Rubin speaks of the 308’s drive experience objectively. “You’re driving an old car. It’s got a clunky metal shift, and you have to double clutch and all that stuff, but it holds the road and it’s not intimidating,” he says. “It’s not a supercar. It’s a really quick old Ferrari.” When asked if he would ever part with it, Rubin is fast to respond: “I have three kids, and I have three cars.”

Gordon Murray Special Vehicles S1 LM

Apart from a Bugatti Type 57 SC Atlantic or Ferrari 250 GTO, a McLaren F1 is sure to be the centerpiece of any car exhibition and land at the top of any favorites list. The only reason that it’s not on this one is because of the car that was immediately next to it—the Gordon Murray Special Vehicles S1 LM. The latter was recently debuted at The Quail, a Motorsports Gathering last month as the first creation from Gordon Murray Automotive’s new Special Vehicles division. And while it’s too soon to tell where the S1 LM fits in Gordon Murray’s pantheon of automotive alchemy, its mission statement was to improve on his benchmark McLaren F1 model, already the contemporary crown jewel of collector cars. The S1 LM is planned to feature a 4.3-liter naturally aspirated V-12—capable of 12,100 rpm—while targeting an overall weight of less than 2,100 pounds. It also exemplifies the trending return to analog at the highest levels of performance cars, as evidenced by its manual gearbox.

We spoke to its designer, Florian Flatau, when at The Quail, and quoted him then as saying: “It’s really inspired by Gordon Murray’s philosophy of lightweight; and in design, I love the similar approach of distilling DNA . . . timeless design, as little design as possible. It’s taking the DNA of the original F1, like a family member, but really trying to become its own animal.” While it’s unknown how the S1 LM will ultimately compare the McLaren F1, it will certainly be the rarer of the two. Only five examples are slated for production (at what seems to be a confidential price), and all are going to the same person.

The Bridge at Topping Rose House

On Sunday, The Bridge at Topping Rose House brought the curtain down on the festivities. Held at what’s touted by the property as a “a reimagined 19th century mansion and estate” in Bridgehampton, a scattering of A-list automobiles on the boutique hotel’s own lawn was complemented by a jazz band and dining from celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s onsite restaurant and culinary team. The 500-person gala benefitted the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons.