Today’s newsletter is going to be a little different. Rather than the usual auction results, sales data and market analysis, I wanted to share a little of what this past weekend at The Bridge in Bridgehampton was like, along with a few photos from the weekend. The Daily Vroom was there for the tenth edition, and after going through everything that happened over the few days, it felt like one of those occasions that deserved something a little different from our normal coverage.

This past weekend was remarkable for a few reasons. With summer coming to an end and fall beginning, the days get shorter, our kids go back or head off to school and, for many of us, the time spent in our favorite cars and the drives we take in them become fewer and farther between. Luckily, for the past ten years there has been a pretty good antidote to that in Bridgehampton, New York.

The Bridge is an invitation-only celebration of fine and unusual automobiles, held on an exclusive golf course built on the former site of the Bridgehampton Race Circuit. The cars are not simply lined up one after another. The field is carefully curated by color, type and character, with off-road capable vehicles sitting in sand traps and groups of rare models brought together in combinations that you would struggle to see anywhere else.

That location matters because the history underneath the manicured greens is every bit as interesting as the cars sitting on top of them.

For those who do not know or remember the Bridgehampton Race Circuit, it stood near the pinnacle of American motorsport during the golden age of racing in the 1950s and 1960s. They called it simply "The Bridge," and drivers seemed to love and fear it in equal measure. Stirling Moss called it the "most challenging course in America," and the circuit regularly embarrassed world-class drivers during the heyday of Can-Am, Trans-Am and international sports car racing.

Mario Andretti, Phil Hill, Bruce McLaren, Dan Gurney, Ken Miles and Briggs Cunningham all raced there, while celebrity drivers including Paul Newman were drawn to the Hamptons and the infamous circuit. It was fast, difficult and spectacularly beautiful, and although much of the old asphalt now sits beneath the golf course, the connection to that history is still very much alive.

One of the nicest examples of that came this year when Lake Underwood arrived in his father's Speedster, a car that had regularly been driven at Bridgehampton and Watkins Glen. His father was involved with the racing school at Watkins Glen and helped train Paul Newman, beginning what would become a long and serious racing career. The connections to motorsport history at The Bridge run much deeper than the asphalt buried beneath the grass, and the views that drivers once saw from the circuit are still there today, stretching out from the clubhouse and across the course.

The weather on Friday and Saturday certainly helped. There were two of those late-afternoon golden hours that make almost every car look like it belongs in a manufacturer brochure, and with cars spanning decades of design and engineering spread across the grounds, there was no shortage of things to stop and look at.

There were also companion events around the main gathering, most notably the 24 Heures Du Montauk rally and PaddockNYC's run from New York City out to the Hamptons. Some of the cars taking part in those events later appeared at The Bridge, although "appeared" probably undersells just how casually some very serious machinery turned up.

A McLaren F1 reportedly worth around $28 million completed the 24 Heures Du Montauk rally and was later simply parked in guest parking during The Bridge.

Not on the main display. In the parking lot.

That probably tells you more about the weekend than almost anything else. There were cars sitting among the guests that could headline entire automotive events somewhere else.

The main field was hardly lacking either. Mercedes-Benz had a significant presence as it celebrated 140 years, with an assortment of cars spanning generations of innovation and design, from Gullwings through to an extraordinary one-off customized AMG ONE. Ferrari was well represented too, but one of the displays that really stood out was a carefully arranged collection of Testarossas, curated by 1600 Veloce, with a central line of white cars surrounded by examples in other colors.

It was one of those displays where you know all the individual cars already, but seeing that many of them together completely changes the effect. The line of white Testarossas in the middle was enough to make Rick James blush.

And that, really, is where The Bridge separates itself from many other high-end automotive gatherings.

The curation, positioning and sourcing of the cars is spectacular, but it does not feel as though the field has been constructed around an auction catalogue, judging classes or whichever cars happen to be for sale that weekend. Cars are selected because they are interesting, beautiful, historically important or because bringing a particular group together creates something you simply do not see very often.

There were plenty of familiar dealers and specialists from the collector-car world there, as you would expect, including people and businesses we write about regularly, but the commercial side never seemed to overwhelm the event itself. Advertising is kept remarkably subtle, sometimes little more than a license plate frame, which helps keep the focus on appreciating the cars rather than turning the course into another sales floor.

That may sound like a small distinction, but it changes the entire atmosphere. At plenty of automotive events, conversation eventually comes back to what something is worth, what it might sell for or who is trying to buy it. At The Bridge, there seemed to be far more discussion about why somebody loved a particular car, where it had raced, who had driven it and why it mattered in the first place.

The people are a huge part of the weekend for exactly that reason. Exhibitors, owners and guests come from different parts of the automotive world, but the common thread is a genuine interest in the intersection of design, engineering, motorsport and culture. Even surrounded by some extraordinarily valuable machinery, it never seemed as though everyone was simply there to compare values.

There were a few celebrity sightings too, including Martha Stewart and Christie Brinkley appearing together, although even that produced one of the more entertaining little stories from the weekend. Rubin, editor of The Star magazine for the Mercedes-Benz Owners Club, spotted Martha Stewart and politely asked whether he could get a photo with her, while also mentioning that he drinks her green juice recipe every morning.

Apparently that was enough. He got his photo.

Sunday morning brought some rain, but that did not stop the annual public event at the Bridgehampton Museum, where the wider community had the chance to see some of the cars from the main gathering alongside photographs, posters, artifacts and memorabilia from the original Bridgehampton Race Circuit.

I like that The Bridge has become much more than a few hours on a golf course. Between the rallies, the main event, the museum gathering and everything else happening around Bridgehampton over the weekend, it feels more like a celebration of the area's automotive history than simply another car show.

And perhaps that is the part photographs struggle to capture.

There are larger automotive events, concours with stricter judging and auctions where far more money changes hands, but there are not many places where a $28 million McLaren F1 can complete a rally, turn up in a parking lot and somehow not feel completely out of place. There is also something particularly good about seeing these cars being used rather than simply displayed, whether it is a Speedster returning to the place where it once raced, cars being driven out from New York City or an F1 completing a rally before casually joining everything else.

For me, that is much closer to what this hobby should be about. The cars are obviously important, but they are always better when there are stories attached to them.

A final thank you to Jeff Einhorn, Shamin Abas and Bob Rubin for putting together another remarkable weekend. Events like this do not happen by accident, and the amount of thought that goes into the setting, the cars, the history and the atmosphere is obvious.

The Bridge has now completed its tenth year, and if cars, racing history and extraordinary machinery in a setting that does not feel like another sales floor are your thing, this is one worth having on the radar.

The Bridge XI is scheduled for September 18th, 2027. You will still need to figure out how to get an invitation. That is probably part of the fun.

Back to ‘regular’ content tomorrow.