Jewels in the Park
Concours d'Élégance
The ‘Jewels in the Park’ competition at Classic Days features classics from the heyday of coachbuilding from 1920 to 1960, as well as from the sports car years of the 1960s and 1970s.
The Jewels are back
We present the ‘Jewels in the Park’ Concours d’Élégance in the manor house park of the Birkhof estate. Here you can see masterpieces of coachbuilding.
The history of coachbuilding
Self-driving carriages were intended to replace horses and carriages in the long term. The expertise for unusual superstructures – at that time still based on wood with a sheet metal-planked ash wood construction similar to that used for carriages or ships – lay with the carriage builders of the time. Many of them worked on both technological developments in parallel for many years, seeking new customers while serving old ones – those with engines and those with only one horsepower.
The Crown Jewel of automotive engineering
Coachbuilders were incredibly creative, keen to experiment, developed new techniques and used not only high-quality but also often unusual materials. Many ‘prototypes’ were created, and much of the work was commissioned by wealthy car enthusiasts who wanted to stand out with maximum individuality and call their own unique design language and vehicles their own.
It was not only manufacturers who purchased the chassis as ‘rolling chassis’ and then asked coachbuilders to perform the creative act – also to cause a stir at motor shows. In many cases, it was also to impress other owners, collectors and industrialists with the ‘tailor-made’ car body – and sometimes to outdo them.
The old major brands
You know the big names in coachbuilding – and you recognise them – in many car models today. Ghia, Bertone, Vignale, Pininfarina, Touring, Barker, Hooper, Mulliner, Chapron, Zagato. And there were many coachbuilders that have since disappeared: Figoni, Falaschi, Erdmann & Rossi, Thrupp & Maberly, Vandenplas, Park Ward, Castagna, Pennock and D’Ieteren.
However, factory-built bodies are also well known, as manufacturers themselves created incredibly beautiful designs – at Mercedes-Benz, these include cars with the “Sindelfingen” body.