UK: Salon Privé draws in classic car enthusiasts at Syon Park

From the Telegraph: Salon Privé draws in classic car enthusiasts at Syon Park
If you want to see the very finest of a kind, only certain events will do. The Oscars if you’re a film lover; the Paris catwalk shows if you’re a fashionista – and Salon Privé if you’re a classic car enthusiast.

This – the fourth event in the BMW 6 Season, heralding the launch of the BMW 6 Series – is the sort of car show where the contents of the car park alone would win several prizes (and have done), and where the gleam from all the highly-polished bonnets must cause quite a distraction to Heathrow-bound aircraft.

Held this year in the gracious grounds of Syon Park, west London, Salon Privé has become a fixture on the circuit for those global car aficionados whose plans revolve not only around whether to visit the house on Lake Geneva or the apartment in Monaco, but whether to drive the classic coupé or the race-tuned supercar when they get there.

It has several major features: a prestigious auction for those with a few yen, dollars or dinar to add to their dream garage; a showcase of modern elite vehicles, from frankly terrifying 200mph supercars to unimaginably luxurious limousines; and a concours d’elegance competition, where the most highly pampered and perfectly prepared examples of the world’s classics battle it out to be crowned the best of the best.

These thoroughbreds are coaxed by teams of experts into better-than-new condition, their provenance is triple-checked and every tiny detail honed to utter perfection.

There are legendary tales of engineers painstakingly filing down the undersides of screws, for instance, so that when they are tightened to the correct torque their slotted heads all line up exactly. This is car maintenance raised to the level of an art form.

And, of course, while the cars are the stars of Salon Privé, the people who come to see them, and to be seen doing so, are equally elegant. From global royalty to rock stars, and from those endowed with old money to those with youth and beauty, the lawns of Syon Park were awash with champagne-sipping glitterati.

The English weather did its best to put a damper on the event at the start, so those standing by with sponges and chamois leathers were delighted when the sky cleared and the attendees were able to swap large umbrellas for oversized sunglasses.

And the team showing off the new BMW 6 Series Convertible were equally very happy to lower the roof and impress the onlookers with its summery elegance.

Even among a collection of the world’s finest cars, its sleek leather interior garnered plenty of admiring glances.

Meanwhile, the owner of one of the many BMW classics in the car park was being awarded a prize – his cherished motor was voted ‘the car most people would like to go home in’. In truth, almost every vehicle at Salon Privé came into that category.