A Reunion of the Rest of the Cars; Concorso returns to its roots but keeps all the Ferraris.(News)

Byline: Mark Vaughn

The good news about this year's Concorso Italiano was that there were more of the cheap Italian sports cars you kept fixing and sometimes even drove in college. That's good news if you like Fiat Cinquecentos and Lancia Scorpions. And who doesn't?

In recent years Concorso has been given over to acres and acres of new Ferraris and Lamborghinis, to the exclusion of cars non-millionaires could own. Sure, the acres and acres of new Ferraris were on hand this year, too, backing up along two fairways of the Bayonet Black Horse Golf Course at Monterey, and no one complained about that. How can you file a complaint that there are too many Ferraris anywhere, whatsamattayou? This year was more of a return to equilibrium.

How'd that happen? Diversity in the planning. There were five featured marques this time: the 100th anniversary of the Targa Florio, 100 years of Lancia, 50 years of design by Giorgetto Giugiaro, 35 years of Pantera and an Apollo reunion (see page 28). Yes, Apollo.

All those anniversaries and such made this year's Concorso less like a new-car dealership and more like the goofy collection of an Italian eccentric. More Etceterini, as they say.

Right in the middle of the whole thing were the Lancias. There were loads of them: Flaminias, Fulvias, Flavias as well as every Lancia from Appia to Zagato, close to 100 altogether, enough for one from each year of production, except that most of these were from the '70s. Lancia club members sat in circles barbequing like it was a regular club picnic. Imagine what they'd do to you if you fired up the hibachi on the 18th green at Pebble?

The Lancias were surrounded by the Fiats: ...