1937 Horch 853 wins Best of Show at Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance

The buzz started as soon as the Horch rolled up to the line Thursday morning for The Tour, a drive around the Monterey Penninsula for cars entered in Sunday's Pebble Beach concours.

"Did you see the Horch," people asked each other. "Did you see those fenders? Those long, flowing fenders? Man, that thing is a block long and a half a block wide."

"The Horch" was Bob Lee's 1937 Horch 853, a car that filled all the parameters of a Pebble winner: It was, as everyone said, long. It was wide and the fenders flowed gracefully along the sides like an elegant wake to a very sporting luxury cruiser. Lee would later say it had “75,000 acres of chrome,” too.

But never trust the buzz. It has been wrong many more times than it has been right. And when the rest of the field rolled onto the lawn Sunday morning at sunup, there were plenty of strong contenders for the crystal Best of Show "Trophee."

Sam Mann, who has won Pebble several times, and almost won it several more, drove onto the 18th green in a gorgeous blue 1947 Delahaye with its own fender trusses and its own aura. Peter Mullin had another strong Delahaye, a 1951 235. Then there were Bentleys aplenty, striking Packards and beautiful Bugattis. They were strong, but it turned out, not strong enough.

When emcee Ed Hermann read the winner, no one was surprised. Except maybe Bob Lee himself, who had never let himself believe he'd done it again (he won two years ago with a Daimler).

"I felt it but you never know," Lee said amidst the winner's confetti and streamers. "It's never in the bag."

Well, it's in the bag now, Bob, and it's a pretty nice bag.

By Mark Vaughn