Photography by Lucas Scarfone.
Every September, the fairways of Cobble Beach Golf Resort overlooking Georgian Bay get a break from the irons and clubs and become temporary home to an extraordinary collection of automobiles. Some arrive from neighbouring Ontario communities and others travel from across the continent. Together they illustrate more than a century of automotive history.
The Cobble Beach Concours d’Elegance recently celebrated its 12th edition, giving founder Rob McLeese another opportunity to marvel at the cars he loves and reflect on how far the event has come since its inaugural showing in 2013.
“I say this every year, but they get better every year,” McLeese says. “The quality of the cars were phenomenal. They were so phenomenal that there were a ton of cars that, any other year, would have won their class, and they didn’t this year.”
This year’s field reached back to the earliest days of motoring, with vehicles dating to 1898, and extended to modern performance icons like the McLaren P1 and Mercedes-AMG ONE.
For McLeese, pulling together such an eclectic collection is an exercise in composition. Part planning. Part luck. The layout of the field is finalized just two days before the event, allowing organizers to accommodate last-minute withdrawals and arrivals while making the most of the landscape.
“This is art in motion,” he says. “Part of what you’re doing is you’re trying to sculpt the field to make it an interesting field that will flow.”
Among this year’s most memorable entries was the 1932 Röhr 8 Type F Streamliner, a burgundy German automobile that took home Best of Show. McLeese had admired the car before.
“I’d seen it indoors several times. And indoors, it’s phenomenal because of how exquisite it is, how delicate and how intricate the design is,” he recalls, adding that the sunlight revealed details he’d never seen before.
He points to the elaborate door hinges and the car’s remarkable paint finish, which he says incorporates scales from 40,000 herring.
“When you look at that, it just kind of jumps at you. It’s really cool.”
Another favourite was the 1937 Mercedes-Benz 540K Sport Cabriolet by Erdmann & Rossi, originally displayed at the Berlin Motor Show. The car earned Outstanding Pre-war honours, while a 1949 Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 SS Superleggera received the Outstanding Post-war award.
The range of machinery on display was equally impressive. A special gathering of Corvette design studies brought together the 1959 Corvette Stingray Racer, 1961 Mako Shark and 1969 Manta Ray, alongside the futuristic Corvette CX concept. Seeing these vehicles together offered visitors a rare look at the progression of Corvette design across generations.
That history became particularly meaningful with the appearance of legendary automotive designer Peter Brock, who designed the original Stingray Racer when he was just 19 years old.
For McLeese, Brock was one of the highlights of the entire weekend.
“He’s the Energizer Bunny,” he says. “He was so cool with the little kids, with the big kids. Whenever he’d stop and somebody’d say, ‘That’s Peter Brock,’ then they’d all swarm him.”
For all the extraordinary machinery on display, some of McLeese’s favourite moments involve the youngest visitors. This year’s Hagerty Youth Judging program welcomed 32 children between 7 and 12 years old, along with another 8 teenagers aged 13 to 17.
Many owners allowed the young judges to climb inside their cars, including the GM Heritage Center, which brought the 1959 Corvette Stingray Racer. Brock joined the children inside the very car he had helped create decades earlier.
“That’s a real highlight watching these kids,” McLeese says. “The kids come in who have seen these pictures for years and all of a sudden there’s their hero or the car that they aspire to right in front of them and they can see it. It’s just pretty cool watching these kids.”
The program has already helped nurture some remarkable talent. McLeese recalls meeting Patrick Rizzo as a 12-year-old enthusiast who instantly recognized a Maserati MC12 during an event at the Grey Roots Museum. At just 19, Rizzo returned to Cobble Beach this year as a chief class judge, having also earned the position of chief judge at the Northville Concours in Michigan.
Encouraging that enthusiasm is especially important to McLeese, whose own judging team includes volunteers from across Canada and the United States. He guesses that about 80 per cent of the team has been involved since the inaugural concours in 2013, with many paying their own travel expenses to participate.
The event’s charitable efforts have also grown over the years. McLeese expects this year’s fundraising to total between $150,000 and $180,000 once the final figures are counted, bringing the cumulative amount raised over 12 editions to more than $1.6 million.
His own annual swim in Georgian Bay raised more than $72,000, including matching donations, despite unusually difficult conditions.
“We had two-foot waves the day of the swim,” he recalls. “This year was the roughest I’ve seen it.”
It’s a considerable undertaking for McLeese and the team, who spend months preparing for a weekend that, by his own admission, takes days to recover from. Yet his excitement about the cars and the people who bring them remains infectious.
The 2026 event brought collectors from as far away as Newfoundland, with everything from immaculate American classics to irreplaceable European coachwork arriving on the Georgian Bay shoreline. The judging field continues to grow more competitive, and the younger generation is increasingly involved in preserving the history behind these remarkable machines.
Twelve editions in, McLeese is still finding new reasons to be excited about what arrives on the fairways each September. And judging by this year’s collection, the enthusiasts who make the journey to Cobble Beach have plenty of reasons to keep coming back.
