Further to our story on our jury member Kip Wasenko from the USA I thought it would be churlish not to mention our other two North American judges Stuart Field and Ken Gross.
Ken has been a Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance Chief Class Judge for 35 years. He serves on the Pebble Beach Selection Committee. He is the Chief Judge for the Greenwich (CT) Concours d’Elegance. Ken has judged at Amelia Island, The Miami Cavalcade, Cavallino, St. Michaels, Boca Raton, Radnor Hunt, Keels and Wheels, The Elegance at Hershey, Pinehurst, Forest Grove, Kiawah Island, The Greenbrier, the Concours of America at St. Johns, Hilton Head Island, and the Concours on Rodeo Drive. He has also judged at the Zoute Grand Prix Concours, Knokke-Heist, Belgium; the Ferrari 70 Concours in Modena, Italy; the Concours Suisse, in Coppet, Switzerland, the Concorso d’Eleganza in Lugano, Switzerland, the Sydney Harbour Concours in Australia, and the 21-Gun Salute Concours d’Elegance in Delhi, India. Ken is a juror for the Concorso d’Eleganza at Villa d’Este, Italy.
Ken has received the Automotive Hall of Fame Distinguished Service Citation, the Lorin Tryon Trophy at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, the Ken Purdy award from the International Motor Press Association, the Dean Bachelor Lifetime Achievement Award, from the Motor Press Guild in Los Angeles, the Lee Iacocca Award, the Pinnacle Award at the Hilton Head Concours d’Elegance, the Nicolas Cugnot Award from the Antique Automobile Club of America, and the IAMA Lifetime Achievement Award. He recently received the Friend of Automotive History Award, from the Society of Automotive Historians. Ken served as the Concours Director for the Chattanooga MotorCar Festival, and he presently serves on the Advisory Boards of the American Hot Rod Foundation and T.R.O.G. (The Race of Gentlemen).
Formerly Executive Director of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, Ken Gross has been Guest Curator for sixteen highly-acclaimed exhibitions of extraordinary automobiles and motorcycles in fine art museums, including: “The Allure of the Automobile,” High Museum of Art, Atlanta (2010) and the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR, (2011); “Speed: The Art of the Performance Automobile,” Utah Museum of Fine Arts, in Salt Lake City (2012) “Sensuous Steel: Art-Deco Automobiles” at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville (2013); “Porsche By Design: Seducing Speed,” at the North Carolina Museum of Art (2013); “Dream Cars: Innovative Design, Visionary Ideas,” (2014) at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Indianapolis Museum of Art (2015), and “Sculpted in Steel,” at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (2016).
Ken curated “Bellisima! The Italian Automotive Renaissance, 1946-to-1975,” for the Frist Museum in Nashville in mid-2016, and presented “Rolling Sculpture” at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, NC, in 2017. He was the guest curator for a critically acclaimed 2018 exhibition of Streamlined Moderne automobiles for the Portland Art Museum in Portland, OR, which was followed by “Drive! Iconic American Cars and Motorcycles,” held at the Taubman Museum of Art, in Roanoke, VA (2018). His exhibition, “Rolling Sculpture,” from January-to-May 2023, at the Vero Beach Museum of Art in Vero Beach, FL, set a museum record for attendance. “Bugatti: Reaching for Perfection,” at The Academy Art Museum, Easton, MD, December 2024 until April 2025, was very well received. Most recently, Ken was the Guest Curator for “Roaring: Art Fashion and the Automobile in Modern France,” at the St. Louis Art Museum, in 2025.
His exhibitions of fine cars in fine art museums have attracted over 1 million visitors. He was the Co-Curator for “Viva Viclas!,” an exhibit of Lowrider Motorcycles at the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, NC (2020-2021). He developed the opening exhibitions for the new Savoy Automobile Museum, in Cartersville, GA, which opened in December 2021, and he continues to work with the Savoy as guest curator and consultant.
Along with numerous exhibition catalogs, Ken’s 25 automotive books include “Ferrari 275 GTB,” “Vintage Cars,” “Hot Rods and Custom Cars: Los Angeles and The Dry Lakes;” “So-Cal Coupe,” “Art of the Hot Rod,” “Milestone Hot Rods,” “The Illustrated BMW Buyer’s Guide,” and “Ferrari 250GT SWB.” Ken co-wrote “Rockin’ Garages” in 2013, with Tom Cotter. He’s also the author of “Behind the Headlights,” an acclaimed SPEED/TV educational series. Recent books include “Iconic: Art Design, Advertising and the Automobile,” published in December 2016, and “RVM Classics,” a privately released volume in 2018 on the historic hot rod collection of Richard Munz. His newest books include “Concours d’Elegance,” and “The Lane Motor Museum, a Hobby Gone Wild.” “Deuce!,” a book on the 1932 Ford hot rod collection of Bruce Meyer, was released in 2021. Several more books are under development.
His publications include: Sports Car Market, Collier AutoMedia, Linkage, Magneto, Octane, Road & Track, AutoWeek, thedrive.com, Playboy, The Robb Report, edmunds.com, American Car Collector, The Porsche 356 Registry, Porsche Panorama, Automobile Magazine, Hagerty’s Magazine, Forbes, Fortune, Modern Rodding, Motor Trend Classic, The Rodder’s Journal, Street Rodder Magazine, Hot Rod Magazine, Hot Rod DeLuxe, Bimmer,msnautos.com, WM Brown, Old Cars Weekly and thedrive.com. Ken has been a North American Car of the Year juror (NACTOY) since the award’s inception, and he’s judged the International Engine of the Year.
And finally, one of his fabulous and talented family, son Christopher is the lead singer for the acclaimed rock group “Spin Doctors;”
We will tell you more about Stuart, pictured below in the sunshine at this year’s Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este, when we have more time and space, but rest assured he is no less accomplished a judge than Ken, but certainly not as good a singer as Christopher!!
Ken Gross photo credit – Sean Sweeney.
