The Many Faces of Amelia.(Amelia Island, Florida's annual vintage car show: Concours d'Elegance)

It's a sunny Friday afternoon, and I'm trolling down Highway A1A, the two-lane beach road on Amelia Island, Florida. Traffic is crawling, but for once I'm not itching to pass. The vehicle in front, the one holding up the tourists, looks like a stagecoach- but it's really an early Rolls-Royce. The only reason I know this is that, minutes earlier, I'd happened upon a show of vintage Rolls-Royces in Fernandina Beach, Amelia's historic small town.

I follow the ancient Roller hoping to talk to its owner. I've never seen this car before, but I have a pretty good idea where it is heading: to the Ritz-Carlton. This is the weekend the hotel hosts the Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance.

I bought a ticket to the first Amelia Concours eight years ago. Now I'm here as a judge. In that time the Concours has grown into one of the country's top vintage car events.

But what is a car show, anyway? Some nice iron, folks strolling around taking in the ambience, a few blue ribbons. For starters, maybe. But Amelia proves to be about a lot more.

It's about concours chair Bill Warner, businessman, car collector, raconteur and sometime Road & Track photographer-and his dream of creating this event. Warner knows everyone who is here to help out; he proves it on Sunday by flawlessly introducing each of the judges, 60-some in all, by name and hometown. Without notes. He gets a round of applause.

You move quickly through one of these weekends, bombarded by impressions that become snapshots in the mind. Heroes drift by, and sometimes you get a chance to talk. At the Automotive Fine Artists Society exhibit, I catch up with painter Bill Neale. There's Tom Gale, recently retired head of Chrysler design, who is also judging. Child TV star-turned-automotive historian Tim Considine is here. And renaissance ...