My favorite? The choice is decidedly split between two cars that represent two prominent aspects of many modern women's aesthetics and personalities: elegance, represented by the dreamy romanticism of the snow-white 1949 Bentley Mark VI DHC owned by Paige and Bill Baker Jr. (Page 21), and vivaciousness, represented by the brazen power of the 1970 Oldsmobile 442 W-30 owned by Robert Stokes (Page 43). The former for driving a lady through the French Riviera; the latter for that lady to drive through Smokey and the Bandit territory in hot pursuit of a boot-slingin' good time!

Unlike at most of the top-tier concours events in Southern California, the organizers of the 2012 Palos Verdes Concours d'Elegance assembled a grand collection of American muscle. The field spanned two classes: Pony Cars (Mustangs, Camaros, Javelins) and classic, big-block, mid-sized terrors of Woodward Boulevard in Detroit, where the Big Three's engineers battled each other for bragging rights in the Swinging Sixties.

And on hand was the car that--literally--started it all: Tenney Fairchild's 1964 Pontiac GTO (Page 36), the ringer submitted by Jim Wangers that ended up on the most famous cover of Car and Driver, a painting of a Ferrari GTO leading the Pontiac through a downhill, right-hand turn. And Fairchild brought along Jim Wangers for the ride.

Yet what was so surprising in such a competitive field was that one restorer, Phil LaChapelle, restored all three winners in the muscle-car class. Placing third was a fresh restoration of the previously mentioned Oldsmobile 442.