172 Rob Fisher of the Hillsborough Concours d'Elegance
56 annotations
Rob Fisher of the Hillsborough Concours d'Elegance joins Bring a Trailer Podcast to walk through a 70th-anniversary celebration built around judging, community, and logistics. The hosts lay out the weekend’s rhythm—June 28, plus a June 26 kickoff and Saturday’s Tour d’Elegance with 80–100 cars. They preview featured themes like Mercedes-Benz’s 100th anniversary and a 1939 540K with royal provenance, while also discussing how concours culture has evolved, including volunteer judging and the Phoenix Award.
Ferrari SP2 is a rare, special Ferrari supercar. It’s the kind of car you’d expect to see at a fancy car show because it’s limited and hard to find.
03:10
Car
Wiener Mobile
The Wiener Mobile is the big hot-dog truck from Oscar Mayer. It’s a fun, recognizable novelty vehicle that people get excited to see at car events.
04:07
Term
Children's Choice Award
A Children’s Choice Award is a prize where kids pick their favorite car. It’s basically the kids’ version of a “best car” award at the show.
08:09
Term
special roaster
A roadster is an open-top car, usually without a hard roof. The host is describing a special version of the 1939 Mercedes-Benz 540K with that kind of open-body style.
08:12
Term
provenance history
Provenance history means the car’s “paper trail”—who owned it and what its background is. For collectors and car shows, that history helps prove the car’s story is real and important.
08:37
Concept
resto mods
A restomod is an older car that’s been fixed up, but also upgraded with modern parts. It keeps the classic style, but tries to make it drive and feel better than the original.
08:44
Topic
Concord
In this conversation, “Concord” refers to car-show events where people bring cars to be displayed and judged. The host is saying it’s getting harder for certain owners and cars to participate.
08:57
Term
pre-war cars
“Pre-war cars” refers to automobiles built before World War II. They’re often harder to maintain today because many parts are scarce, and fewer specialists and owners remain who have the knowledge and access to original components.
09:11
Concept
marquee cars
“Marquee cars” are the big-name cars—usually the most famous or valuable ones at a show. When they’re extremely expensive, owners may avoid taking them out because it costs more and carries more risk.
09:16
Term
insurance
Here, “insurance” is the coverage cost for expensive cars. If a car is worth a lot, moving it to events can raise the risk and the insurance cost, so owners may keep them at home.
09:22
Term
trailer
A trailer is how you haul a car instead of driving it. For expensive classic cars, owners often trailer them to shows, but now the cost and risk can be higher.
09:31
Concept
special rider
A “special rider” is extra insurance coverage added to a policy for a specific situation. In this case, it likely means coverage for taking a valuable car to an event.
The Mercury Villager is a minivan, meaning it’s a family-focused vehicle built to carry people and cargo comfortably. It was made for everyday driving rather than sports performance. People might mention it because it’s a distinctive model from the minivan era.
The Mazda RX-7 is a sports car from Mazda that’s famous for a unique engine design. Instead of a normal piston engine, it uses a rotary engine, and people often love it for driving feel and mod potential.
to bring a trailer podcast. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the BAT podcast. This is Randy
Nonenberg, co-founder and bring a trailer here at BAT HQ in San Francisco. I have a
super special guest today, Rob Fisher joining me. Rob Fisher is the chairman of the Hillsboro
Concorde Elegance Foundation and past chairman of other parts of that show. That's a local
show here in the Bay Area. It is esteemed for a number of reasons, one of which is,
Rob, give me the right title here, longest continually running concor, not just in California.
In the world. In the world because it gets that continuously running because they never took a
year off since the founding when, when was it founded? 1956. 1956, it started all the way till
2026. It'll be a bit of an anniversary year and BAT is going to be there at the concor for our
first time. I'm excited. Different folks on staff have attended different times, but now we get
to have the BAT presence and the show is going to be a great show. And thanks for joining us on
the podcast. Great to be here. I'm excited to be here. You've been to BAT HQ before. You're also,
you call yourself an OG BAT user, which I love hearing. And then we'll talk about the show,
which is coming up. Give us the date on the show, June 28th, which is coming here pretty quick.
Crystal Springs Golf Course off 280. That's right. And it's actually a concor weekend. So we have a
kickoff party on the 26th, where we have what we call the Start Your Engines Kickoff Party. And
that is a really special event that's held at a private private car collection club located in
Burley Game. So it's a really neat venue that has fabulous food. And the honorary judges will be
there and a bunch of entrants and anyone else who wants to come kind of help kick off the weekend.
And then Saturday morning, we have the Tour d'Elegance, which is always a sellout as well,
where we have upwards of 80 to 100 cars that queue up in the morning in Burley Game and then
take off on a great drive. And this year, we're going to go see a very, very special private
collection. And after viewing that collection, we'll end up back in Hillsborough at a private
estate that has not been used before for us on the tour. And it's going to be an unbelievable
facility, just outstanding place to kick back, have some great food and talk about the drive
they did that day. And then on Sunday, we've got the concor, our 70th annual.
Fantastic. I'm super excited about the Saturday. I wasn't going to let you gloss past that anymore
because I'm excited to be there. I love driving. I've done some driving with you before at
different events. The Saturday event, I'm hoping to do with my dad and jump in a car and get to
do that and see those special spots you're talking about. It sounds like it'll be pretty terrific.
It's a lot of fun because people bring everything from their...
These are show cars. These are cars that will be in the show. This is just civilian other cars.
It could be anything, but you'd be amazed. I mean, we've had everything from SP2 Ferrari to
250 GTO to last year, we had the Wiener Mobile. And by the way, it was amazing because it took me
over 10 years. It's a little unknown secret. You have to apply online and there are five
Wiener mobiles all over the country. Apply for what? To have them come to your event.
Oh, they came to the event. So they actually came to the event.
They serve food or they give people t-shirts or what do they do?
They were just the greatest. It was the greatest thing ever. I have to tell you,
of all the stuff I've done with the concor, we usually rate my happiness with the event.
The types of cars that came, we get something really special or we have a special person
attending or what have you. But when I got that email telling me that the Wiener Mobile
was going to be coming, I absolutely flipped out. In fact, I yelled and my wife's like,
are you okay? What's going on? And I'm like, we got the Wiener Mobile.
So did that one pull onto the lawn on Sunday? Oh, yeah. Okay. What class was it in or what was it
doing? It was just parked over on the side. Actually, by the way, it was parked over where
you guys are going to be. Oh, okay. Great. We're in the one year later...
Premier spot. Yeah, there you go.
I hope it's Premier and it's not just the hot dog parking.
No. And the Wiener Mobile won the Children's Choice Award, as you would expect.
But it was great. They let us tour inside of it. The thing was actually pretty amazing,
a vehicle. And I got a little bit of history from the gals and there were two women and they're
just out of college and they just were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and just...
How far it could? Where was it out of? So how?
It came out of LA. So they flew in. One of them was from Wisconsin, the other one from
South Carolina. So they met like in LA and they were attached to the hip for a couple of months
driving the Wiener Mobile all over the place. Okay. Now, you've got to be careful of not
set expectation that anybody shows up this year. It's going to be the Wiener Mobile show.
That was a one and done. Is that right? That was a one and done.
Okay. But sounds like a highlight.
It was. And I'm sure you got some aces up your sleeve for what's going to show up this year.
But why don't you tell people a little bit about the show? Like either the classes or the structure
or what's going on or why has it been so long-standing when all these other shows have come
and gone. This one is still right up there as one to see.
That's a great question. I think... Well, first, I'll just talk about the show.
So the show this year, it is our 70th anniversary. And it started in 1956 and it was basically a
humble little show. And we can talk more about the history in a minute. But it is basically...
The reason it has stayed, I think, as long as it has is because of the incredible amount of
community support. We're 100% volunteer organization, always have been, probably always will be.
And we talk about our group as being kind of small but mighty. I mean, our actual operating
committee that puts the show on is like 25 people. It swells to about 60 on the day because of
volunteers that will come and help out. But otherwise, just generally speaking, we're
a pretty small little crew that get together once a month. But we got great support from the
community. But we also have great support from the collectors and the car owners.
Because we bring real quality judging. We have a phenomenal 70-year relationship with the SCCA
who brings a tremendous number of judges for us as well as Ferrari Club of America, Rolls Royce
Bentley, and then the Classic Car Club of America. And this year, the basic same kind of format,
we've got about 23, 24 judged classes. We have three or four special displays. And then we have a
mix of presentations. We've got an automotive seminar where we'll be talking potentially
with yourself, talking about your story and the story behind Bring a Trailer. And we also have
a new car display where we joke about them being potentially the concor entries in 30, 35 years.
They bring over the modern cars from the new car display, the guys that are on the field showing
their cars off, all the current models. One of the things we're also featuring is 100th anniversary
of Mercedes-Benz. Oh, great. And what's really neat about that is I was doing some research. You
know, you're always 689 months out, 10 months out ahead of the show. You start looking
about things that you might be featuring. And I was doing some research and found that Mercedes-Benz
was founded on June 28th, 1926. And our show is June 28th, 2026. So 100 years to the day,
Mercedes-Benz was formed. So we've got three classes of Mercedes. And we've got a bunch of
different really exciting, interesting Mercedes that I think everything from pre-war spectacular
big cars all the way up to late 20s. And is it secret? I mean, are you allowed to say a car
that's coming or people are supposed to show up and be amazed? You're not supposed to really
let the cat out of the bag until they show up. Well, no, we're actually doing a press release on
one of them. So the Keller Collection, which I'm sure you know, it has premier Mercedes-Benz.
You've never snuffed me in there, though. I've tried to ride a few different coattails to try
to get in and see that deal. But never, my invite always gets lost in the mail, you know.
Let's talk. It is spectacular. It's unbelievable. But, you know, they have all kinds of different
cars, but they're well known for their, mostly known for their Mercedes collection.
And so we're getting this beautiful 1939 540K special roaster that has unbelievable
provenance history, royal history. And we're just very grateful, very thankful to them for
bringing the cars out. You know, it's a really interesting challenge, too, for Concord. And
you were talking about longevity. And, you know, it's not hard to get a lot of modern cars. And
you see a lot of those types of shows are still very popular these days. You know,
tuner shows, low rider, modified hot rod, you know, resto mods. The good guys are still going
really, really strong. But traditional Concord, which the core of that is unmodified, you know,
original, that's getting harder and to get people that have their cars like
that. And when you start talking about the really older cars, the pre-war cars, a lot of the folks
that owned those no longer own them have passed away. You can't work on them, can't get parts.
And so it's getting harder and harder for those cars to, you know, come to the shows.
And then when you talk about some of these, you know, these marquee cars, what really is
interesting is some of those have become so valuable that it's too expensive to take them out,
you know, because of the insurance. And before it used to be, yeah, we'll just put it on a trailer
and we'll take it. But because of, again, like values and insurance and risk and all that kind
of stuff, a lot of these like museums used to participate quite a lot. Now, very few take
their cars out anymore, unless they get a special rider. And frankly, they a lot of times elast the
Concord itself to pay for that. And sure, all these expensive cars, yeah.
Or pay for the transport, gas, hotels. And, you know, we work on a
nothing budget. I mean, we're very razor thin. Everything we make net, we give to our charities.
And so that creates a bit of a challenge. I mean, we've lost two Concord this year.
The Nilo Serrano Concord is no longer happening, which normally happens in October. And the
Ferndale Concord is not happening. So there's now just two Northern California and not County
Pebble Concord now. So it's tough. But our sponsors love us. We love them. And we continue to add
and grow our sponsorship support, which is great. Frankly, thank you. Bring a trailer on.
I mean, it really makes a difference because the expenses of putting on these shows is also
astronomical. You know, food and the tents and again, the insurance, things like that,
all of those things continue to rise. And as an event planner, it's really hard to also say,
for example, raise your ticket prices commensurate to what your expenses have gone up. Same thing
with the entry fees. You know, at some point, you get this inverse relationship and people start
dropping off. And fortunately, we've had a nice balance with that. But that's because
we've been able to, as prices have increased, fortunately, we've added sponsors to help fill
that void. But it's tough. You know, there's a lot of competition for those dollars, you know,
and you pay $1,000 to sponsor a class and might not seem like a whole lot, but you know, people
can put that $1,000 to a lot of different uses. Yep. And off the bottom line, what you're talking
about about the rest going to charity, right? Like if you get charged that or don't net that,
yeah, it really makes a different dynamic for what's left over at the end, which is great.
Tell us about the charities that it supports. Sure. We support charities called Ability Path,
which is interesting. That's over 100-year-old charity that was founded in Hillsborough.
And it is a charity that specializes in helping children and adults that are neurodivergent.
And it's amazing. They do training, occupational therapy. They do OJT on the job, you know,
help people get jobs. They're just a phenomenal organization. It's headed up by Brian Knight.
He was at Electronic Arts, who, of all things, he was my Cross the Street neighbor when we
raised our kids together in Baywood and in San Mateo. And just as luck would have it,
he went, had a great career. Now he's serving the communities, CDOs, Flint to be there.
Second charity is the Guardsmen, San Francisco Guardsmen, and they send underprivileged children
to camp. Unbelievable organization. Again, been around for decades. And then our last charity
is the Hillsborough Schools Foundation. And that's really kind of our, you know, our OJ
as well. It was originally the Hillsborough Parents' Group or something like that.
That started in 1956. So those three primary charities, and we work really hard for them.
And they help us as well. They provide volunteers and they publicize the event.
That's terrific. You mentioned we'd touch on the history of the show. I definitely want to hear
about the history of the show. I think it's very interesting how concours started to spring up and
how they were organized and what it was all around, right? There's a few that are well known,
obviously, sort of Pebbles history and how they did it associated with the racing and other, you
know, San Diego, different ones have some cool history behind them. And then European Concours
that we were familiar with, you're kind of swimming in that pond amongst all of these.
But then we also wanted to tease the audience and hear about some BET stories that you have. So I
want to do both of those. But yeah, let's cover the history of the show first, because I'm anxious
to hear it from the horse's mouth. So in 1956, somebody decides what's the move and who was
involved. So it was Hillsborough Schools Parents Association. And they decided to put on a quote,
unquote, car show. And my crisis downstairs is 1956. I mean, someone of those have been pulled
on as a brand new car, or were they showing, you know, that stuff from the teens in the first
show? Do you have pictures from the first show? Yeah, we do. And it's going to be in our program
as well. Oh, cool. That's cool. It's extraordinary. I mean, we had everything from,
you know, a early 1900s DD on all the way up to a, you know, 1956 DB in Maserati's and rolls,
we had Rolls Royces. They had over 100 cars. It was incredible. And in fact, the car that
won first place was a Rolls Royce. But it was always kind of a, well, it was held at the school
field at the North School in Hillsborough. And they just basically parked on the pitch there.
And they actually had SCCA judges, and they had a whole bunch of other interesting honorary judges.
In fact, Bing Crosby, who lived in Hillsborough, he was known to go to the Hillsborough School.
Did he live in Hillsborough? Oh, yeah. Okay, I didn't know that. I know he had the house
down on the peninsula, but and then obviously all over the place. He was a Hillsborough guy.
He was. Okay. And was he there? Word was he came two or three times.
Is that right? Yeah. In fact, I have a, I have a picture of him
sitting in one of the cars. Is that right? Yeah. It's pretty, it's pretty amazing. And, you know,
there's Hillsborough, I mean, we know, this is a nationwide worldwide audience that is listening
to this. And some will know Hillsborough like you and I do. And some will probably not. But it's a
lovely community in the Bay Area where a lot of sort of who's, who have lived over the years,
or maybe still do lovely views out over the Bay. And it's a hilly sort of private secluded thing.
But it's how far from San Francisco, 20, 25 minutes from San Francisco. So it has always had
some super interesting people of industry and local influential folks that have lived there.
So it doesn't surprise anybody when you say, Hey, Hillsborough has a very nice concor, but also
there's cars hidden in those garages over the years that are like unbelievable. So when I was
a kid, you'd go like driving around in those neighborhoods trying to peer, you know, what
people had in their side yard or what people had in their driveway, it was always very cool.
So that kind of springs up this, oh, the parents of this school just decided to
pull their Bentley's out. You know what I mean? Like that sort of thing was a reality.
No question about it. And I haven't been able to find the list of entrants. I got several of the
cars, but I was not able to get the official entry list. But you have to remember back then,
it was like their first time. But what I have found over time is I've picked up this really
interesting archive from the past shows and the local parents association, they were really good
about actually documenting cars and entries and keeping programs and keeping like literally entry
forms and things like that and entrant lists. So I've got quite a hodgepodge of it. And again,
I took a whole bunch of pictures of them and they're going to be kind of a montage in our program
this year. But, you know, it happened on October 7th in 1956. One of the things I noticed is I was
doing some research pulling up some of these old newspaper articles. So there was some,
there was press before the event and then there was post event press. And they were talking
about that Abigail Van Buren was going to be there giving people advice. So, you know,
those of younger people here probably all knew that is, but that's the old Dear Abby,
who used to have a syndicated national column for giving advice.
Was she Bay Area? Yeah.
Is that right? Okay, I never knew the Dear Abby was Bay Area.
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