Phil Hill

January '14

Aside from winning Best in Show, Hill was a singularly influential figure in transforming the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance.
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Feature Article from Hemmings Classic Car

January, 2014 - Jim Donnelly

We're going to discuss the other Phil Hill here, the one from the lifetime that followed his career as one of the greatest racing drivers the United States has ever produced. Given the carnage that ravaged the sport during the height of his driving career, Philip Toll Hill, Jr. was exceedingly fortunate in that he survived long enough to have any second act in life. He made the most of it, and became an acclaimed proponent of vintage-car restoration and the American concours movement, at a time when relatively few people were interested in either.

Born in Miami in 1927, Hill migrated early to Southern California, where his father became a postmaster and lived most of his life in Santa Monica. Hill Jr. dropped out of USC to begin working on cars, especially sports cars, and began to race. Hill's family owned a succession of future Classics, in which he learned to drive, including a 1918 Packard Fleetwood Cabriolet and a Pierce-Arrow. At that time, such cars were considered by most to be wasteful relics of a bygone and needlessly extravagant era. Only a few innately grasped their potential historical significance. The antique car world, to the extent it then existed, was centered on cars from the horseless and early Brass Era. Newer vehicles of the 1930s, for instance, were thought useful only for towing the older ones.

It's inaccurate to assert that Hill underwent a transformation following his racing career. Those who knew him well say he clearly enjoyed older cars and automotive history even before he began driving competitively. His epiphany with Classics began when he was becoming established as an international racing star. It was 1955 when he came to Pebble Beach and swept the sports car races there. The affiliated Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance was in its fifth year, and Phil entered the car he'd driven long before, a 1931 Pierce-Arrow 41 LeBaron Cabriolet, which he'd restored himself. One Pebble Beach judge was Lucius Beebe, the San Francisco author, historian and man-about-everywhere. Hill didn't expect his car to win, but another judge, Peter DePaolo, the 1925 Indianapolis 500 winner, lobbied that it be picked for Best in Show because of its authenticity. Hill, still wearing greasy trousers from working on his race car, was shocked, given that Pebble Beach winners had typically been new cars, in the European fashion. The award determined his future in the hobby.

"Phil felt that he could take one of those cars and restore it, and show people that it really had a reason to be maintained," Pebble Beach media director Kandace Hawkinson says.

Hill joined the works Ferrari team the following year, won Le Mans three times, and in 1961, became the sole American-born driver to win the world championship in Formula 1. He continued racing in several disciplines through 1967, in the process achieving the distinction of having won the first (Carrell Speedway near Los Angeles, a dirt track, aboard an MG TC) and last (the BOAC 500 at Brands Hatch, England, with a winged Chaparral 2F in 1967) races of his career. Retired as a driver, he established a restoration shop, Hill & Vaughn, with his partner Ken Vaughn. Cars that emerged from the shop regularly rolled onto the lawn at Pebble Beach, and other concours that were established in North America as the great European gatherings slowly died away. He also served some 40 years as a Pebble Beach judge until he passed away in 2008 while en route to the Monterey Historic Races.

"Phil's win in 1955 really convinced everyone here to take a look at collector cars, and it was only after that Pebble Beach became a car show focused on collector cars," Kandace tells us. "And now, concours around the world are equated with collector cars. So that win had very widespread and long-term implications. Phil not only raced here, and showed cars here, and restored cars that were shown here, but he was our longest-serving judge. He is right at the top of the Pebble Beach pantheon."


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