Will Grand Basel Miami Beach be an Art Basel for car collectors?
Organisers for showpiece Pebble Beach and the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance car events don’t see any conflict from MCH Group trade show
Just what you didn’t know you always wanted: an Art Basel for cars.
MCH Group, which presents the annual Baselworld watch show in Switzerland and Art Basel art fairs around the world, has finalised a contract with the city of Miami Beach, Florida, to hold a new trade show centred on 200 of the world’s “masterpiece” cars.
“We very carefully looked at the success of Art Basel, which is the most successful product of MCH at the moment, and wanted to convert them in a way to set up the similar concept for automotive masterpieces,” says Mark Backé, the global director of the event. “This is the next big thing when you look at the big collector markets of the world.”
Grand Basel Miami Beach will showcase cars from the past, present, and future, according to event organisers. Visitors will come to the exhibition halls to look at rare and thrilling vintage cars and get a sneak peek at technology still to come. It’s scheduled to run from February 22-24, 2019, following an inaugural “Grand Basel” show from September 6-9, 2018, in Basel, Switzerland. Hong Kong will host it in May 2019.
Tickets for 40,000 hoped-for public attendees (with attendance capped at 10,000 per day) at the Swiss event will cost 75 Swiss francs (US$75); organisers say they hope for 60,000 attendees in Miami.
Art Basel counts 60,000 participants over a week in Miami each year in December.
The cars at the event, which will be held in the Miami Convention Center, will be offered for sale only by invited dealers and brokers. No auction houses, such as Gooding & Co or RM Sotheby’s, have said they will participate, though a spokesman for Grand Basel Miami Beach says “we can’t rule it out”.
Doing the inviting is a secret panel of advisers based in Zurich. Paolo Tumminelli, the director of the Goodbrands Institute and the primary impetus behind the development of Grand Basel, is chairman of the board: “It will be our mission to establish the automobile as a cultural asset,” he says. One headline name, actor and car enthusiast Idris Elba, has already lent his support.
The event will be so exclusive, Backé says, that dealers aspiring to attend cannot just book a space.