Zoute Grand Prix 2015: Aftermovie
It’s been a few weeks now since the summum of car events in Belgium called the Zoute Grand Prix. It’s a 4 day event combining a Top Marques, Concours d’Elegance, Bonhams Sale and hundreds of cars from pre war oldtimers to state of the art hypercars.
Attending the Zoute Grand Prix on Friday
Ward tells us his experiences were attending the second day of the oldtimer GT rally,
I went to Zoute Grand Prix on the second day of the event, a day that the ‘flying mile’ was held. Not that we got it see it though. After strolling trough Knokke, Stan and I concluded this wasn’t an event we could enjoy, it was crowed, crammed and way to uptight for our liking (please note this is a subjective and personal conclusion). And thus we decided to concentrate on what was drawn towards the event being very and I mean very rare cars. Legions of original Porsche 356’s, original Ferrari 250’s and we even helped jumpstart a Aston Martin DB5.
We spent most of our day carspotting and learning about models that left the factory decades ago. Hell, we saw so many legends that mentioning them all would ruin this article by making it one big list. Our day at ZGP2015 was memorable, but not because of the organisation, no it was because of the epic carspotting.
Final day of the Zoute Grand Prix
Kenny and I went on Sunday to attend the GT Tour with supercars from the last 20 years. Cars from a Maserati 3200 and alfa 4C’s to supercars like the Porsche 918 and Murcielago SV and a rare Viper SRT-10 ACR 7:12 n° 3/4.
After the cars had left the beach we went to the Concours d’Elegance where we were greeted with a BMW 328 Hommage alongside the new BMW 7-Series and Rolls Royce Dawn. We continued onto the fairway where dozens of oldtimers came together to compete for the prestigious prizes. These are defiantly not the regular oldtimers you see on the road once in a while, they’re the bedroom wall posters of your childhood. Cars like the Miura, 250GT LWB California Spyder, AC Cobra, GT40, 911 2.7 Carrera RS, BMW 507 and many more!
We returned towards the beach to watch the cars from the GT Tour arriving and we got amazed at how strictly everything is organized. Before the cars can drive to the finish they have to wait at an intersection to be escorted by the police through the busy streets. This gave us the perfect opportunity of making some extra shots of the cars.
In the afternoon the awards from the Concours were announced and then driven from the golf fairway to the honoring platform. We’ve waited for the cars to pass somewhere in between at a roundabout as we did last year and this was were we realized how much this event has grown in only one year.
The streets were full of people enjoying the event with their friends while they watch the wide variety of cars driving by. Sure the people participating in the event are from a much higher class than the visitors but it’s the latter that makes this event so great. The Zoute Grand Prix is not just about cars, it’s the atmosphere that comes with it that makes this event so popular, even for non petrolheads.
