As you would have seen on Wednesday and Thursday, Salon Privé this year was spectacular. The show featured the Concours, ladies day and on Friday, supercar day.
Salon Privé is always special and never fails in impressing and, as they say, they saved the best till last. The weather was bad as you could ever imagine, the British Summer being typically unpredictable but it all cleared up and the sun even made an appearance just in time for the all important super/hypercar run. At 16:00 the cars all formed a line and began a parade lap around the green outside of Syon House. It was quite the spectacle as cars of all shape, sizes, nationalities and colour all swept around much to the delight of the spectators, armed with Champaign and Scones.
Once the parade ended all the cars were sent home and this years Salon Privé ended…although it didn’t. The chaos just began and loitering for an hour or so after the show was meant to have ended proved to the the highlight of the entire event! Millions of pounds of cars, old and new, concepts and classics, all milled around the damp yet sunny car park searching for their transporters.
It was a spectacular sight and produced photo opportunities I do not think I will ever be blessed with again. To start with there was a mass line up of the supercars, split up by the odd classic Bugatti or Alfa. A Koenigsegg awaiting transport had been parked in a patch with grass reaching over its roof line and perilously close to a tree.
Further down the parking lot sat a huge lorry branded ‘The Spyker Squadron’. This was inhabited by the Spyker Alieron looking stunning in it’s burnt orange paint. What happened next was very very surreal. A golf buggy, that was used in the day to carry the VIP’s at the event, was seen tugging the brand new concept B6 Venator before being skilfully lined up with the ramp and pushed in by the team including the smartly dressed Spyker representative.
Towards the end of the parking lot the owner of a mustard yellow liveried racing Porsche 911 carefully winched the car into its cocoon backwards. A beautiful Ferrari 250 having being given the same treatment to the left of the Porsche and to the right a rosso corse 1952 Ferrari 212/225 competition car is being tenderly wiped down before being pushed into its carriage.
Heading further down to the river that runs through Syon Park and more modern cars await their turn to be loaded for a trip to prestige showrooms to be admired by passers by. A black Bugatti Veyron, a matching black Porsche Carrera GT with tastefully painted white wheels and a deep blue Rolls Royce Wraith tick cool in a small cluster hidden behind a transporter, the beautiful Syon Park setting adding to the beauty and emotion of the trio.
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