Cars & Cocktails: The Tradition

Cars & Cocktails: The Tradition

There is a specific morning smell at a good car meet.

It arrives before you see anything. Oil, diesel, of course, but that underlying scent; Coffee, definitely. Exhaust still warm from the drive in. Cut grass if the event is on a lawn, asphalt if it's a parking lot. And underneath all of it, something metallic and oily and faintly exciting, the smell of machines that were built to move and are, for this one morning, standing still while their owners stand beside them holding their warm cups and talking.

This is the tradition. It did not exactly begin with cars or even with coffee. It did not begin in a Newport Beach parking lot in 2000. It began the moment the first automobile arrived somewhere beautiful, when its driver cut the engine, opened a hamper, and poured something cold into a glass.

We have been doing it ever since.

Elevenses: The Start of the Tradition

The English invented the mid-morning break with the same serene conviction they brought to all their greatest contributions: the understanding that productivity is improved, not diminished, by stopping at eleven o'clock and having something decent.

Elevenses predates the automobile entirely, rooted in the rhythm of a working day that began early and required a bridge between breakfast and a lunch that would not arrive for hours. Tea or champagne, coffee, biscuits, a slice of something. Not a meal. A pause. The aristocracy did it in their morning rooms. The working class did it on-site. The tradition crossed every class distinction because the need for it was universal.

When the automobile arrived in Edwardian Britain and the motoring picnic was born, elevenses went with it. The logical mid-point of a morning drive. You found a suitable view, or post dove hunt or shooting, or arrived at a rally checkpoint, or simply agreed that eleven o'clock was eleven o'clock; you stopped and produced the hamper.

The hamper! Fortnum and Mason, the Piccadilly food hall founded in 1707, became the definitive outfitter of the British motoring picnic. Their wicker hampers, fitted with china plates, proper cutlery, and linen napkins, were packed into the boots of Bentleys and Rolls-Royces by families who understood that the quality of what you eat while looking at a beautiful landscape is directly proportional to the quality of the landscape itself. Designed to picnic and filled to the brim with the treats of choice.

The Rolls-Royce coachbuilders went further. Fitted picnic sets were built into the trunks of early Silver Ghosts, compartments holding everything needed for a proper roadside tea or Bucks Fizz, including spirit kettles for hot water, bone china cups, champagne flutes, and fold-out tables that bolted to the running boards. These were not accessories. They were considered standard equipment for the serious motorist. A complete fitted Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost picnic set in working order sells today for sums that would cover a modest car purchase.

Goodwood, the motor circuit on the Duke of Richmond's West Sussex estate, understood the tradition and built it into the Revival from the beginning. The Goodwood Revival is a period-correct recreation of the circuit's 1948-1966 racing years, and the dress code requires that spectators wear authentic clothing from the era. The food and drink follow the same logic: Buck's Fizz in the grandstands, proper teas in the paddock, hampers opened on tartan rugs in the infield, the whole spectacle of English motoring culture preserved in amber and reproduced every September with extraordinary fidelity. The picnic hamper competition is a genuine event. The winner is judged on presentation, content, and the correct period spirit of the whole enterprise.

Cars & Coffee: The American Version

In 2000, a small group of enthusiasts began meeting in a Newport Beach, California parking lot on Sunday mornings to look at each other's cars and drink coffee from a nearby Starbucks. No registration. No entry fee. No concours judging. No scheduled agenda of any kind. Just show up, park, walk around, drink coffee, talk.

The concept was so obvious and so perfectly suited to the particular American talent for informal community-building that it spread with the speed of something whose time had clearly come. Cars and Coffee events now operate in more than 200 locations across the United States and in dozens of countries. Hagerty, the collector car insurer that has become the de facto cultural authority on the hobby, estimated in 2022 that there were approximately 500,000 distinct car-related gatherings annually in the U.S. alone.

The drink is still coffee. That is the point, as Cars and Coffee is a morning event, which means it operates in the register of the English elevenses rather than the evening cocktail party: informal, accessible, nobody performing for anyone, the conversation happening between people who genuinely share the obsession. The Porsche sits next to the Chevelle sits next to the BMW two-door that somebody drove an hour in the dark to show. The coffee is from a food truck or a nearby shop or someone's thermos. The cars are extraordinary. The mood is completely relaxed.

The Concours: When the Drinks Get Serious

The concours d'elegance is the car world's equivalent of a museum opening with a better dress code and a longer open bar.

Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, held each August on the 18th fairway of the Lodge at Pebble Beach, has been running since 1950. It is the most prestigious automotive event in North America, the place where a 1931 Bugatti Type 41 Royale or a 1938 Talbot-Lago T150-C-SS Teardrop Coupe is displayed on grass that has been manicured to exactly the correct height, with cars judged by experts in white blazers, and admired by a crowd in linen and sundresses holding glasses of something cold from the hospitality area.

The social calendar around Pebble Beach has grown to fill the entire week preceding the Sunday concours. The auctions run Thursday and Friday. Car Week itself hosts dozens of satellite events, informal morning meets at Carmel Valley Ranch, the Quail motorsports gathering on Friday, the Porsche Werks Reunion, the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion at Laguna Seca. Every event has a hospitality structure. Every morning has its coffee. Every afternoon has its wine and its Champagne. By Sunday, when the finest cars in the world are arranged on the 18th fairway and the judges make their rounds, the week's accumulated socializing has produced a relaxed, well-fed crowd that is genuinely, unhurriedly happy to be exactly where it is.

The Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este, held each May on the shores of Lake Como in Italy, is the European equivalent, and the aperitivo culture of northern Italy layers onto the car culture with perfect naturalness. The Villa d'Este hotel, built in 1568 as a cardinal's retreat and operating as a luxury hotel since 1873, opens its terraces to the concours and its guests. Cars are displayed on the lakeside lawn. Aperol Spritzes arrive without being ordered. The lake glitters. A 1937 Alfa Romeo 8C is parked thirty feet from where your Negroni is waiting.

The Mille Miglia, the historic road race that runs each May from Brescia through the Italian countryside to Rome and back, is perhaps the most atmospheric car and cocktail event in the world, even though it is technically a race. The route passes through hundreds of towns whose inhabitants treat it as both a festival and a local holiday. Every piazza along the route has been transformed into a spectator area. The bars open at dawn. The espresso comes first, then the aperitivo as the afternoon wears on, then the wine with whatever the local kitchen has produced for the occasion. The cars, priceless pre-war and vintage machines driven flat-out through medieval town centers, pass through the cheering crowd at intervals that allow multiple aperitivos between sightings. The Italians have perfected this.

Tailgating: The American Art Form

Americans invented tailgating, refined it over a century, and then quietly allowed a certain tier of it to become one of the most pleasurable social rituals available to anyone with a beautiful car and a willingness to arrive early.

The term comes from the tailgate of a wagon or truck, the hinged rear panel that folds down to create an impromptu surface. The tradition of pre-event outdoor eating on the grounds of a venue predates the automobile entirely, with Civil War records describing civilian spectators picnicking at battles with a concerning degree of social organization. College football formalized it. The automobile gave it mobility.

The basic tailgate is a cooler filled with beer, a grill, and some folding chairs behind a pickup truck or open tailgate. Perfectly good, hits the spot 9/10 times. Not what we are discussing.

The elevated tailgate looks different. At the Kentucky Derby, the infield at Churchill Downs is a sustained outdoor party where the mint julep, the race's official drink since 1938 according to Churchill Downs itself, arrives in souvenir glasses that change design every year and are kept as artifacts. The official recipe calls for bourbon, simple syrup, fresh mint, and crushed ice, all of it constructed with the reverence due to a drink that has been served at this specific event for nearly ninety years.

At Augusta National during the Masters, the tradition is austerity performed as elegance. The food prices are legendarily low, the pimento cheese sandwich legendarily simple, and the entire atmosphere is one of enforced restraint that somehow produces exactly the correct mood for watching golf among 30,000 people who have been trying to get tickets for a decade.

At the Monaco Grand Prix, the tailgate equivalent is the superyacht hospitality, which operates at a remove from ordinary tailgating culture that is roughly the distance between a paper cup and a crystal flute. The harbor at Port Hercule fills with vessels whose decks become floating grandstands during the race weekend, and the hospitality on board runs to Champagne service and catered meals and the particular pleasure of watching a Formula 1 car exit the tunnel at 170 miles per hour while holding a properly made drink.

At polo matches in the Hamptons or Palm Beach or the Royal County of Berkshire, the tailgate is the picnic laid out beside the car during halftime, a tradition so embedded in the social fabric of the sport that spectators are invited onto the field at the break to replace the divots thrown up by the horses' hooves, a bizarre and delightful ritual that happens to also function as a reason to walk your picnic setup past your neighbors and let them admire the glassware.

The Drinks

Every event has a correct drink. Getting this right is half the tradition.

The Negroni belongs at any car event with an Italian connection and at any evening gathering where the light is good. It was invented in Florence in 1919 when Count Camillo Negroni asked the bartender at Caffè Casoni to strengthen his Americano by replacing the soda water with gin. Equal parts gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari, stirred, served over ice with an orange peel. The Spritz Report found in 2022 that the Negroni was the most ordered cocktail globally for the third consecutive year. It is THE correct drink for the Mille Miglia, for Villa d'Este, for any later afternoon and evening car gathering with a fire going.

Pimm's Cup is the correct drink for any British event before four in the afternoon. Pimm's No.1, a gin-based liqueur created in the 1840s by James Pimm, owner of a London oyster bar, mixed with lemonade or ginger ale and loaded with mint, cucumber, strawberry, and orange. It is drunk in quantity at Wimbledon, at Goodwood, at garden parties, at any summer occasion where the English sun is making a reasonable effort. It tastes like summer tastes when summer is cooperating.

Buck's Fizz, equal parts orange juice and Champagne, was created at Buck's Club in London in 1921 and is the correct morning drink for concours events, for elevenses that have graduated from tea, and for any situation where Champagne before noon requires a citrus chaperone.

The Aperol Spritz is three parts Prosecco, two parts Aperol, one part soda, and a slice of orange, and it is the correct drink for any lakeside or coastal car event in warm weather. The Spritz Report confirmed in 2024 that the Aperol Spritz is the most popular cocktail in Europe. This is because it is correct.

Espresso Martini works at events that begin in morning and extend into afternoon, when coffee has run its course but the party has not. Two parts vodka, one part coffee liqueur, one part freshly brewed espresso, shaken hard until the foam is thick, served straight up. It was invented in the 1980s by London bartender Dick Bradsell, who gave it to a young model who asked for something to wake her up and then mess her up. The car context gives it more dignity than its origin story suggests.

Champagne needs no occasion but benefits from the right one, and watching genuinely beautiful cars in good company while the morning light falls across polished paint is exactly the right one.

How to Host Your Own

You do not need a Pebble Beach concours to do this properly. You need a beautiful car, a good location, and enough self-respect to bring real glasses.

The morning version is the elevenses approach. A thermos of good coffee or a portable French press, chamapagne, some proper pastries, a light blanket if the dew is still on the grass. Arrive before the crowd if there is one. Park somewhere with a view. Talk to the people who drove interesting things. Do not organize the morning into a scheduled event. Let it happen.

The afternoon version is the picnic approach. A wicker or canvas hamper with real plates, cloth napkins, and wine glasses, never plastic. A bottle of Pimm's or a cold Champagne. Cheese, charcuterie, good bread, something seasonal. A blanket on the grass. Park the car where the light hits it correctly and then forget about it, because the point is the company.

The evening version requires a fire if possible. A properly made Negroni or a bottle of something good. The car parked in the glow. Music at the right volume, which is lower than you think. If you are hosting, make the drinks yourself rather than opening bottles and pointing at the table. The craft of making something for someone is part of the hospitality.

The one rule, the only rule, is this: bring real glass. Not plastic cups, not paper, not whatever was left in the car from last weekend. The Rolls-Royce picnic set had bone china. Fortnum and Mason hampers came with crystal. The choice of glass is a statement about whether you are having a drink or hosting an occasion. The tradition is an occasion.

Jerry Seinfeld understood the essential simplicity of it and built a television show from the premise. Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee ran for eleven seasons, pairing an absurd collector car with a comedian and a cup of coffee, the whole enterprise predicated on the observation that the drive and the drink and the company are the same thing. The best car meets operate on the same principle, with the social conversation happening around and between and through the machines.

The cars are the reason to gather. The cocktails are what you hold while you do.

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