Pebble Beach 2016: Around the Quail with race legend Jackie Stewart
British racing legend Sir Jackie Stewart was on hand early Friday morning at the Quail, one of Monterey Car Week’s most exclusive gatherings.
On the grounds of the Quail Lodge and Golf Club, where some of the world’s most passionate auto enthusiasts had paid $600 to watch some of the world’s wealthiest classic car owners compete for prizes, the diminutive driver, now 77, gave a tour of the great cars on display.
Wearing his signature tartan — a cap, instead of his usual trousers — over a Rolex-badged windbreaker and lemon-colored slacks, the man once known as “The Flying Scot” discussed his likes (E-type Jaguars), dislikes (European cars with too much chrome, over-restored classics) and the reasons he doesn’t drive anymore.
Stewart, born John Young Stewart, raced professionally from 1965 to 1973. He was world champion three times and runner-up twice, and worked as a color commentator for decades. A fixture at the Quail and often a judge at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, he is worshipped by the car collectors.
During a one-hour stroll around the Quail grounds, he was interrupted close to two dozen times by car fans eager for a selfie or a handshake.
Stewart bore it all in good humor, then went back to discussing racing history.
The Shelby-era Ford GTs, he said, wiped out the European competition. “European racing was almost destroyed by that car,” he said. “European cars were small-engine cars. The Ford beat Ferrari, beat Jaguar, beat Aston Martin, on sheer muscle.”
But he saved his most lavish praise for the E-type Jaguar, often known as the XKE.
“The E-type was the most beautiful production car ever made,” Stewart said.
The racing legend drove one on his honeymoon — a red convertible, he said — to a skeet-shooting competition in Germany. “I finished in second,” he said dryly. “I blame my wife for that.”
Stewart was quietly critical of a few of the cars assembled at the Quail, many competing for prizes. He stopped beside a gleaming Alfa Romeo that had been adorned with extra chrome parts.
“I don’t like that,” he tutted. “You see the left-hand drive. It must have been made for an American.”
A few moments later, when he came upon a similarly over-chromed Ferrari, but with a right-hand drive, he said, “Must have been a Frenchman.”
Stewart said his humble beginnings in Scotland didn’t prepare him to be a racer. Neither did nature. “I am severely dyslexic,” he said. “I left school at 15 without knowing my alphabet. But I could find my way around a gearbox.”
He got a job as a mechanic at a local shop and was asked to race a Porsche by a local rich kid whose family wouldn’t let him onto the track. Stewart said, “I finished second in my first race, and they said, ‘Well, you’d better have another go.’ I finished first in my second race.”
The great racer, who has spent much of his post-racing career as a corporate spokesman — he was represented by the same agency that had Jack Nicklaus, Bjorn Borg and skier Jean Claude Killy on its roster — made sure to plug Rolex, with whom he’s been associated since 1968, and the Peninsula hotel chain, which owns the Quail.
He had particularly kind words for Michael Kadoorie, whose family owns the Peninsula parent Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels and who helped start the Quail motorsports gathering.
As if conjured, the small-statured Kadoorie appeared. He and Stewart embraced, and Stewart said, “You see? It’s just like I said. He is a man of average height, like myself.”
Stewart said he drives very little today. Splitting his time between Switzerland and England, he said, he’s too busy.
“In England, I’m always working, so I never drive,” he said.
What’s he driven in? A Lexus 600. Stewart said he drove Rolls-Royces, Bentleys, Aston Martins, Mercedes-Benzes, and everything else, before determining the Lexus was the quietest and most comfortable car on the road.
British to the end, though, Stewart also plugged an English carmaker.
“But if I had just one car to drive, it would be the Range Rover,” he said.
