Cavallino 30: Symposium & Tour of Palm Beach

The Cavallino Symposium series is meant to bring people together to learn about a particular Ferrari model and become intimately familiar with it through narration on its technical specifications, history and even through personal (and sometimes unbelievable) anecdotes from its owners. This year’s symposium series featured 3 very unique models; a 330 GTC, a 512BB, and a 250 GT SWB.

I learned a lot about the 330 GTC during this symposium and also picked up a couple of nuggets about the 512BB. However, it was Judd Dayton’s story about his 250 GT SWB that was fascinating and even more so was the story behind a gift he presented to John Barnes to commemorate 30 years of Cavallino – a portrait of Enzo Ferrari.

The story, as Mr. Dayton told it, was that during a trip to Italy many years ago he snapped a photo of Enzo Ferrari through a crowd of people that were surrounding him. Upon his return to the US, he developed the images and discovered that he had snapped a truly great image of the Commendatore himself. Mr. Dayton was so pleased with the image that he mailed two prints of the photograph to Mr. Ferrari with a note stating that one was a gift for him and kindly requesting that he sign the other print and mail it back, which Mr. Ferrari did. Many years later, after the passing of Mr. Ferrari, fortune brought Mr. Dayton and Piero Ferrari (Enzo’s son) together. It was during this encounter that Mr. Dayton told Piero the story of the photograph only to have Piero tell him that Enzo had loved the photo so much that he put it on his desk and there it remained until the time of his death. Further, Piero went on to tell Mr. Dayton that the photograph now sits on his desk to remember his father. What a story!

Mr. Dayton has been attending Cavallino for 30 years and his 250 GT SWB has always made an appearance in someway. If you’ve attended Cavallino with any regularity you will immediately recognize his car by the blank circles along the doors, hood and trunk. Truly a magnificent example with a great story to boot. It was Mr. Dayton’s desire to one day have his car photographed on the Ocean Lawn of The Breakers and wouldn’t you know it, we finally made it happen.

Upon the conclusion of the symposium I made my way to the driveway of The Breakers for the start of the Tour of Palm Beach. It is a highly anticipated event as you may be able to see cars that were not at the track the day before and that will not be seen at the show on Saturday. It’s a perfect opportunity to catch some cool cars in the wild and the line-up waiting for the starting flag makes for a very cool sight. This year I decided to catch the cars at their first stop at the Royal Ponciana.

Upon conclusion of the tour, some of the cars were displayed in the Esplanade and Ocean Lawn ahead of the tour awards dinner. There is no doubt that this setting complemented the cars very well and it made for terrific photo opportunities.