August 28, 2025 • 13 mins
Jon Summers is the Motoring Historian. He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into a fairly inept sports bike rider. On his show he gets together with various co-hosts to talk about new and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, motoring travel.
Jon discusses the fascinating history of the 1924 Hispano-Suiza "Tulipwood," the recent winner at the Pebble Beach Concours. Despite initially not recognizing the car, he provides an in-depth overview of its background, from its commission by fighter pilot Andre Dubonnet to its construction out of mahogany, contrary to its 'Tulipwood' nickname. He elaborates on its various restorations, particularly by Don Williams and the Blackhawk Museum, highlighting the debate between historical accuracy and aesthetic enhancements in car restoration. Jon also touches on other notable cars at the Pebble Beach event, such as a Jaguar C-Type racer and an XK120, and shares anecdotes about the display and appreciation of classic cars.
==================== 00:00 Overview of Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance Winner 01:04 History of the Hispano-Suiza Tulipwood 04:16 Restoration and Presentation at Blackhawk Museum 08:04 Discussion on Car Authenticity and Elegance 10:03 Other Notable Cars at Pebble Beach 11:55 Conclusion and Acknowledgements===== (Oo---x---oO) =====
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
John Summers is the motoring historian.
He was a company car thrashing technologysales rep that turned into a fairly inept
sports bike rider hailing from California.
He collects cars and bikesbuilt with plenty of cheap and
fast and not much reliable.
On his show, he gets together withvarious co-hosts to talk about new
and old cars driving motorbikes,motor racing, and motoring travel.
(00:32):
Good day.
Good morning, good afternoon.
It is John Summers, the Motoringhistorian brief vignette.
This one, just wanting to offera little overview on this year's
Pebble Beach Concor winner.
The Hispano swr.
Tulipwood.
Gonna open with a confession.
Saw the car on the field.
(00:52):
Didn't recognize it.
Didn't recognize it as a winner.
Didn't recognize thefact that I know the car.
So let's talk a little bit aboutthat and and why the car won.
So it's a 1924.
It was commissioned by aguy called Andre Dubnet.
I don't know what kind of a drink it is.
I guess it was bigger years ago in France.
(01:14):
It's like an after dinnerkind of dubnet cognac.
If you're the pebble beaches, they knowit like it was Budweiser or or PBR.
Or, or ley bitter if you're fromNorthern England kind of thing.
But it's not quite, I mean, so, soDubnet commissioned it, I guess Dubnet
background was, he was a fighterpilot in the First World War and
(01:36):
those early aircraft, it was all aboutbeing able to fly higher and longer.
Than anyone else.
So it was all about whose engine was best.
And the guys that builtthose engines were BMW.
There was Rolls Royce, there was DamerBenz, and there was his Spano Swer.
And the guy that workedfor his Spano Swer, the key
(01:58):
figure is this guy, mark ett.
So the company is one of these companiesa bit like Bugatti, where it was based
in one country, but the founder wassomewhere else and 'cause of the war
and revolution and, and all of that.
And the company survives now the storkmotif that is his spano Suza that survives
today making high quality machine tools.
(02:21):
So Berg, it was Swiss, but they setup in Spain or something like that.
And I, I don't know where theFrench connection came in.
It may have been Dubnet money, but thepoint here is that Dubnet used wealth
from the booze to go most racing after theexcitement of being a fighter pilot in the
first World War, it ended and obviously,what were you gonna build the car out of?
(02:43):
Well, the best bloody engine.
From the plains, right?
So that was his baro, SWER, and Burke.
And you know, since we well knowthat for every 10 pounds you
save, you gain a horsepower.
The thought was that they wouldbuild the car out of wood, tulip
wood, you say, well, actually no.
It just sort of looked that colorand that's what people call it now.
(03:04):
This is a very important detail on thecar because I learned just today reading
about it that it was actually mahogany.
That the car was made from.
I mean, the point is right, the, thebody weighs 160 pounds, so Dubnet
races finishes reasonably well.
I want to say fourth, I've notdone my preparation, but finishes
(03:25):
fourth in the 1924 Target, Florio.
Now if you know anything about thetarget florio, you'll know that, you
know, I mean, I drove the course inan Alpha 1 4 7 rental car, and it
was all second and third gear stuff.
So how you got on in a car that hadthe same wheel base as like a speed
six Bentley, like how that was manyget on on the mountains of Sicily.
(03:48):
I'm not really sure, butit did do reasonably well.
I, as I say, I, I, I wannasay it finished fourth.
Now I have.
Rodney W's book on the tag Florio.
He was a writer for the Motorist andhe wrote a book about the tag Florio
years ago, and in that book, there is apicture of the car competing in the event.
Now, for me, at the time when I sawthat photo, when I first got the
(04:11):
book, it was stunning to me becauseyou see, I met the tulip wood.
In 2000, and I would say six, 2007,when I first visited the Black Hawk
Museum in California, now the BlackHawk Museum was put together by a guy
called Don Williams and another guy.
(04:32):
Ken Baring, I can't remember how Ken madehis money, but Ken was friends with Don,
and Don helped Ken collect the right kindof cars, and, and Don was very, very well
known within the Pebble Beach community.
But what Don did was what they didin the eighties, what Bill Har.
Did and, and what these West coast guysdid, which was they, they took cars that
(04:57):
nobody cared about that were derelict andthey restored them, but they restored them
to be the best that they could possiblybe, so that in that car show at Pebble
Beach, they could win best in show.
So that meant consulting their wives oftenabout what color combination was best.
You didn't worry about authenticity.
It meant that.
(05:17):
If originally a normal steelscrew had been used, but now you
could use a chrome one or a bronzeone and it might look better.
Well, that's what you did.
In other words, it was about makingthe cars look great rather than about
making the cars authentically correct.
So I'm gonna include a picture ofthe tulip wood as it originally was.
(05:40):
In fact, I may even use it as thethumbnail as it was in 2008 when I found
it, certainly not as it originally was.
Let's make that clear as it was in 2008,when it was in the Black Hawk Museum,
2000, you know, early two thousands, ithad gold wheels, it had those fenders,
trailing fenders put on the end of it.
(06:01):
Put on the end of the fenders.
And actually, if you looked at the carunder the lights of the Black Hawk,
the body actually looked less brightthan the fenders and those gold wheels.
Now the whole thing aboutthe Black Hawk was that one
evening in Geneva after dinner.
Ken Baring and Don Williamswere walking together.
(06:22):
It was the eighties.
They were talking about cars.
And if you've ever been to Geneva,you'll know that there's the fountain
in the center of town and afteryou've had the fondue, you want to
like walk a little bit and there'sPorsches on the street to look out,
but there's also shops with watches in.
So they were looking in thewindow with watches and they were
talking about the watches, andthey were amusing at the idea.
Could you display cars like jewelry?
(06:44):
And they came up with a notion that youcould build a museum that was like that.
So the Black Hawk is all this black marbleand the cars jump off this black marble.
Pretty impressive concepts.
Now, for us docents, it was kindof annoying because we like to do
things like if you add a car fromthe 1890s, you like to show, you
know, the manic Kidd with the dress.
And that really made it comealive for the school kids.
(07:07):
And that definitely wasn't.
Ken and Don's mantra of the car,like a piece of jewelry twinkling
in the window of a Geneva jewelryshop like it was a Breitling or a a
Patite Philippe, if I pronounced thatcorrectly, which I probably haven't.
So this is the ethosof the his Spana Swer.
(07:30):
Tulip wood.
It's not really tulip wood, it'sa fighter pilot's racing car.
But how serious was as aracing car, who really knows?
I mean, I, I, well, I've notdug into the history of it.
Maybe you know the pebbledescription would have it, but
the point is that in the 1980s.
The way the Tule wood was, was in hearts.
I don't think Don did it.
(07:50):
I think some other guy did itin the sixties or the seventies.
But the, the point is thatthe car was gussied up.
It was made to look in theeyes of the Don Williams era.
People better than original.
So the car that won Pebble Beach andthe car that you'll be familiar with
had black wheels and it had nothing.
(08:11):
No crazy trailing fenders did it?
It just had the torpedo body.
And that prompted me to want to do thispot because I actually believe the car
was more elegant in the form that I sawit in, in the Black Hawk, in the form
that I saw it in, in the Black Hawkwith the bright lights and the gold
wheels and the fenders and elevated it.
(08:34):
It was as the, I read a quote wherethe owner had said, when I acquired
the car, it was a piece of furniture.
It was, it was a piece of furniture.
Are you kidding me?
Now it's like a car.
Is he gonna take it to the MontereyHistorics and race it next year
alongside the Ragtime Races?
No, he is not.
It's a piece of furniture now, exceptnow it doesn't have the fenders
(08:54):
and the gold wheels, and it's.
It's less Shazam for sure.
Is it less elegant?
You might argue it's more elegant.
It's more original looking now, butyou know, in the pod that we recorded
earlier today, Ollie and I, Ollieamusingly used a parallel between
a pebble car and the Fox Mustang.
And he said, you know, if I take thepony wheels off and if I put American
(09:16):
racing wheels on the car is more elegant'cause it looks better, but it's less
elegant 'cause it's less original.
So which is it?
Well, it's a great point, isn't it?
And it's a point which pervadesdirectly to this car 'cause it
looked better with the gold wheels.
I rarely agree with Don Williams.
Don Williams once stood up atthe Blackhawk Museum and talked
about how he liked shiny carsand how he didn't like crap.
(09:38):
And I've always, ever since thenthought to myself, well, Don, I love.
Crap.
I can't consistently collectcrap, partly because that's
what nobody else wants to do.
I don't need it to be shiny or glossy.
I like it to be grubby andused and have the story.
And if you've listened to my pods, youalready know that about collector cars.
So what an interesting anecdote in andaround that show winning Hispano Swer.
(10:03):
So just to wrap up, there area couple of other cars on the
show field that really do.
Deserve every car deserves some attention.
There are a couple more that Ireally wanna draw attention to.
Firstly, a pair of jaguars that werein the post-war preservation class.
The first was a sea type racer that hasa contiguous history, original paint.
It was just a flat out,lovely, lovely old car.
(10:28):
Like when do you seean original racing car?
And this had a beautiful.
Patina on it.
It was kind of a metallicblue JSU, but plate on it.
Lovely.
The other one was, uh, an XK one20, which had been sold new in la,
driven to San Francisco, stored, takenoutta storage, driven another 600
(10:49):
miles, and then put back in storage.
The car had 1,043 miles original.
Well, he was like, butwhat would you do with it?
It's like, it's like ahearing yourself, speak back.
'cause I'm like, I don't know.
What would you do with it?
I mean, look at it.
It's all you could do, isn't it?
I mean, it's awesome.
The smell and the whole like, Imean, after you've brought it to
Pebble Beach, what do you do with it?
(11:10):
You can't drive it.
You can't even change thetires without like hurting.
What makes it special?
Like it's special.
'cause nothing's ever happened to it.
It's that truly is a pieceof furniture, isn't it?
There was, uh, a Cobra class as well.
It was.
Big block cars.
It was like SC cars or something, likeexactly what the, the designation was.
But it was lovely to look at thatwith, uh, one of my docent colleagues,
(11:34):
or the guy who has been a docent withme in the past, one of the cobras on
the field he prepared in his shop.
So looking at.
Cobras with somebody who basicallyhas the skillset to be a pebble judge.
Oh, that is really very pleasing as well.
And that is, of course, experience.
(11:55):
It's a very special thank you.
Drive through.
This episode has been brought to youby Grand Touring Motorsports as part
of our Motoring Podcast network.
For more episodes like this, tune in eachweek for more exciting and educational
(12:16):
content from organizations like TheExotic Car Marketplace, the Motoring
Historian, break Fix, and many others.
If you'd like to support GrandTouring Motor Sports and the Motoring
Podcast Network, sign up for oneof our many sponsorship tiers at
www.patreon.com/gt Motorsports.
Please note that the content,opinions and materials presented and
(12:36):
expressed in this episode are thoseof its creator, and this episode has
been published with their consent.
If you have any inquiries about thisprogram, please contact the creators
of this episode via email or socialmedia as mentioned in the episode.
John Summers is the motoring historian.
He was a company car thrashing technologysales rep that turned into a fairly inept
sports bike rider hailing from California.
He collects cars and bikesbuilt with plenty of cheap and
fast and not much reliable.
On his show, he gets together withvarious co-hosts to talk about new
and old cars driving motorbikes,motor racing, and motoring travel.
(00:32):
Good day.
Good morning, good afternoon.
It is John Summers, the Motoringhistorian brief vignette.
This one, just wanting to offera little overview on this year's
Pebble Beach Concor winner.
The Hispano swr.
Tulipwood.
Gonna open with a confession.
Saw the car on the field.
(00:52):
Didn't recognize it.
Didn't recognize it as a winner.
Didn't recognize thefact that I know the car.
So let's talk a little bit aboutthat and and why the car won.
So it's a 1924.
It was commissioned by aguy called Andre Dubnet.
I don't know what kind of a drink it is.
I guess it was bigger years ago in France.
(01:14):
It's like an after dinnerkind of dubnet cognac.
If you're the pebble beaches, they knowit like it was Budweiser or or PBR.
Or, or ley bitter if you're fromNorthern England kind of thing.
But it's not quite, I mean, so, soDubnet commissioned it, I guess Dubnet
background was, he was a fighterpilot in the First World War and
(01:36):
those early aircraft, it was all aboutbeing able to fly higher and longer.
Than anyone else.
So it was all about whose engine was best.
And the guys that builtthose engines were BMW.
There was Rolls Royce, there was DamerBenz, and there was his Spano Swer.
And the guy that workedfor his Spano Swer, the key
(01:58):
figure is this guy, mark ett.
So the company is one of these companiesa bit like Bugatti, where it was based
in one country, but the founder wassomewhere else and 'cause of the war
and revolution and, and all of that.
And the company survives now the storkmotif that is his spano Suza that survives
today making high quality machine tools.
(02:21):
So Berg, it was Swiss, but they setup in Spain or something like that.
And I, I don't know where theFrench connection came in.
It may have been Dubnet money, but thepoint here is that Dubnet used wealth
from the booze to go most racing after theexcitement of being a fighter pilot in the
first World War, it ended and obviously,what were you gonna build the car out of?
(02:43):
Well, the best bloody engine.
From the plains, right?
So that was his baro, SWER, and Burke.
And you know, since we well knowthat for every 10 pounds you
save, you gain a horsepower.
The thought was that they wouldbuild the car out of wood, tulip
wood, you say, well, actually no.
It just sort of looked that colorand that's what people call it now.
(03:04):
This is a very important detail on thecar because I learned just today reading
about it that it was actually mahogany.
That the car was made from.
I mean, the point is right, the, thebody weighs 160 pounds, so Dubnet
races finishes reasonably well.
I want to say fourth, I've notdone my preparation, but finishes
(03:25):
fourth in the 1924 Target, Florio.
Now if you know anything about thetarget florio, you'll know that, you
know, I mean, I drove the course inan Alpha 1 4 7 rental car, and it
was all second and third gear stuff.
So how you got on in a car that hadthe same wheel base as like a speed
six Bentley, like how that was manyget on on the mountains of Sicily.
(03:48):
I'm not really sure, butit did do reasonably well.
I, as I say, I, I, I wannasay it finished fourth.
Now I have.
Rodney W's book on the tag Florio.
He was a writer for the Motorist andhe wrote a book about the tag Florio
years ago, and in that book, there is apicture of the car competing in the event.
Now, for me, at the time when I sawthat photo, when I first got the
(04:11):
book, it was stunning to me becauseyou see, I met the tulip wood.
In 2000, and I would say six, 2007,when I first visited the Black Hawk
Museum in California, now the BlackHawk Museum was put together by a guy
called Don Williams and another guy.
(04:32):
Ken Baring, I can't remember how Ken madehis money, but Ken was friends with Don,
and Don helped Ken collect the right kindof cars, and, and Don was very, very well
known within the Pebble Beach community.
But what Don did was what they didin the eighties, what Bill Har.
Did and, and what these West coast guysdid, which was they, they took cars that
(04:57):
nobody cared about that were derelict andthey restored them, but they restored them
to be the best that they could possiblybe, so that in that car show at Pebble
Beach, they could win best in show.
So that meant consulting their wives oftenabout what color combination was best.
You didn't worry about authenticity.
It meant that.
(05:17):
If originally a normal steelscrew had been used, but now you
could use a chrome one or a bronzeone and it might look better.
Well, that's what you did.
In other words, it was about makingthe cars look great rather than about
making the cars authentically correct.
So I'm gonna include a picture ofthe tulip wood as it originally was.
(05:40):
In fact, I may even use it as thethumbnail as it was in 2008 when I found
it, certainly not as it originally was.
Let's make that clear as it was in 2008,when it was in the Black Hawk Museum,
2000, you know, early two thousands, ithad gold wheels, it had those fenders,
trailing fenders put on the end of it.
(06:01):
Put on the end of the fenders.
And actually, if you looked at the carunder the lights of the Black Hawk,
the body actually looked less brightthan the fenders and those gold wheels.
Now the whole thing aboutthe Black Hawk was that one
evening in Geneva after dinner.
Ken Baring and Don Williamswere walking together.
(06:22):
It was the eighties.
They were talking about cars.
And if you've ever been to Geneva,you'll know that there's the fountain
in the center of town and afteryou've had the fondue, you want to
like walk a little bit and there'sPorsches on the street to look out,
but there's also shops with watches in.
So they were looking in thewindow with watches and they were
talking about the watches, andthey were amusing at the idea.
Could you display cars like jewelry?
(06:44):
And they came up with a notion that youcould build a museum that was like that.
So the Black Hawk is all this black marbleand the cars jump off this black marble.
Pretty impressive concepts.
Now, for us docents, it was kindof annoying because we like to do
things like if you add a car fromthe 1890s, you like to show, you
know, the manic Kidd with the dress.
And that really made it comealive for the school kids.
(07:07):
And that definitely wasn't.
Ken and Don's mantra of the car,like a piece of jewelry twinkling
in the window of a Geneva jewelryshop like it was a Breitling or a a
Patite Philippe, if I pronounced thatcorrectly, which I probably haven't.
So this is the ethosof the his Spana Swer.
(07:30):
Tulip wood.
It's not really tulip wood, it'sa fighter pilot's racing car.
But how serious was as aracing car, who really knows?
I mean, I, I, well, I've notdug into the history of it.
Maybe you know the pebbledescription would have it, but
the point is that in the 1980s.
The way the Tule wood was, was in hearts.
I don't think Don did it.
(07:50):
I think some other guy did itin the sixties or the seventies.
But the, the point is thatthe car was gussied up.
It was made to look in theeyes of the Don Williams era.
People better than original.
So the car that won Pebble Beach andthe car that you'll be familiar with
had black wheels and it had nothing.
(08:11):
No crazy trailing fenders did it?
It just had the torpedo body.
And that prompted me to want to do thispot because I actually believe the car
was more elegant in the form that I sawit in, in the Black Hawk, in the form
that I saw it in, in the Black Hawkwith the bright lights and the gold
wheels and the fenders and elevated it.
(08:34):
It was as the, I read a quote wherethe owner had said, when I acquired
the car, it was a piece of furniture.
It was, it was a piece of furniture.
Are you kidding me?
Now it's like a car.
Is he gonna take it to the MontereyHistorics and race it next year
alongside the Ragtime Races?
No, he is not.
It's a piece of furniture now, exceptnow it doesn't have the fenders
(08:54):
and the gold wheels, and it's.
It's less Shazam for sure.
Is it less elegant?
You might argue it's more elegant.
It's more original looking now, butyou know, in the pod that we recorded
earlier today, Ollie and I, Ollieamusingly used a parallel between
a pebble car and the Fox Mustang.
And he said, you know, if I take thepony wheels off and if I put American
(09:16):
racing wheels on the car is more elegant'cause it looks better, but it's less
elegant 'cause it's less original.
So which is it?
Well, it's a great point, isn't it?
And it's a point which pervadesdirectly to this car 'cause it
looked better with the gold wheels.
I rarely agree with Don Williams.
Don Williams once stood up atthe Blackhawk Museum and talked
about how he liked shiny carsand how he didn't like crap.
(09:38):
And I've always, ever since thenthought to myself, well, Don, I love.
Crap.
I can't consistently collectcrap, partly because that's
what nobody else wants to do.
I don't need it to be shiny or glossy.
I like it to be grubby andused and have the story.
And if you've listened to my pods, youalready know that about collector cars.
So what an interesting anecdote in andaround that show winning Hispano Swer.
(10:03):
So just to wrap up, there area couple of other cars on the
show field that really do.
Deserve every car deserves some attention.
There are a couple more that Ireally wanna draw attention to.
Firstly, a pair of jaguars that werein the post-war preservation class.
The first was a sea type racer that hasa contiguous history, original paint.
It was just a flat out,lovely, lovely old car.
(10:28):
Like when do you seean original racing car?
And this had a beautiful.
Patina on it.
It was kind of a metallicblue JSU, but plate on it.
Lovely.
The other one was, uh, an XK one20, which had been sold new in la,
driven to San Francisco, stored, takenoutta storage, driven another 600
(10:49):
miles, and then put back in storage.
The car had 1,043 miles original.
Well, he was like, butwhat would you do with it?
It's like, it's like ahearing yourself, speak back.
'cause I'm like, I don't know.
What would you do with it?
I mean, look at it.
It's all you could do, isn't it?
I mean, it's awesome.
The smell and the whole like, Imean, after you've brought it to
Pebble Beach, what do you do with it?
(11:10):
You can't drive it.
You can't even change thetires without like hurting.
What makes it special?
Like it's special.
'cause nothing's ever happened to it.
It's that truly is a pieceof furniture, isn't it?
There was, uh, a Cobra class as well.
It was.
Big block cars.
It was like SC cars or something, likeexactly what the, the designation was.
But it was lovely to look at thatwith, uh, one of my docent colleagues,
(11:34):
or the guy who has been a docent withme in the past, one of the cobras on
the field he prepared in his shop.
So looking at.
Cobras with somebody who basicallyhas the skillset to be a pebble judge.
Oh, that is really very pleasing as well.
And that is, of course, experience.
(11:55):
It's a very special thank you.
Drive through.
This episode has been brought to youby Grand Touring Motorsports as part
of our Motoring Podcast network.
For more episodes like this, tune in eachweek for more exciting and educational
(12:16):
content from organizations like TheExotic Car Marketplace, the Motoring
Historian, break Fix, and many others.
If you'd like to support GrandTouring Motor Sports and the Motoring
Podcast Network, sign up for oneof our many sponsorship tiers at
www.patreon.com/gt Motorsports.
Please note that the content,opinions and materials presented and
(12:36):
expressed in this episode are thoseof its creator, and this episode has
been published with their consent.
If you have any inquiries about thisprogram, please contact the creators
of this episode via email or socialmedia as mentioned in the episode.
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