The Bridge golf club in Bridgehampton had a cloudless September sky overhead and, for one afternoon, looked like the racetrack it used to be. More than 300 cars sat across the fairways and bunkers for The Bridge IX, the ninth year of what's probably the most exclusive car event in the Hamptons. The land itself used to be the Bridgehampton Race Circuit, home to sports car racing from the late 1940s into the 1990s, so there's a bit of poetry in seeing cars parked where they once ran flat out.
That history is basically the whole point of the show. Robert Rubin bought the circuit in 1981 and kept it going until local pressure shut it down in 1998. He later built the private club on the same 550 acres. Every September, he and co-founders Shamin Abas and Jeffrey Einhorn invite members, collectors, and a handful of sponsors to what Rubin likes to call "a garden party for gearheads." No trophies, no class awards, no tickets you can buy your way into. Guests get shuttled in from two miles away. Cars are picked for story and shape rather than price tag.
The mood fit the setting: late-summer light, oysters and lobster passed around the lawn, more conversation than judging. Mercedes-Maybach was presenting sponsor for the first time and used the moment to unveil its first open-top roadster, the Maybach SL, parked next to a GLS 600, an S680, and a few vintage Maybachs for context. Volvo celebrated 70 years in the U.S. with a P1900 Convertible, an Amazon, and the electric EX90 sitting side by side. At some point a Pivotal Helix eVTOL drifted overhead during a demo that felt about as 2025 and about as East End as it gets.
Near the clubhouse, two cars kept people rooted in place: a McLaren F1 next to Gordon Murray's new S1 LM, the lightweight, manual-gearbox homage that had just debuted at Monterey. A few steps away, BMW Art Car No. 20, Julie Mehretu's layered take on the M Hybrid V8, made its East Coast debut in the program's 50th anniversary year. Right next to it was the first DART Car, a McLaren Artura GT4 wrapped by Mickalene Thomas. A panel with Mehretu, Thomas, DART co-founder Zoë Barry, and BMW's Thomas Girst got into art, racing, and female leadership, all on the same patch of grass.
Ferrari people had plenty to look at: 53 cars from Maranello, including three F40s, an SP3 Daytona, a 275 GTB, and the one-off Fantuzzi-bodied car that appeared in Fellini's Toby Dammit. Rubin brought his own dark blue, glass-fiber 1976 308 GTB. Porsche fans got 45 examples of the 911 spanning RUF and Andial specials, artist collaborations with Daniel Arsham, and a full set of Aimé Leon Dore builds running from a 356B up to a 993 Turbo.
The field went well beyond the usual concours lineup, too. A 1928 Bugatti Type 40 Grand Sport, reunited with its original engine, was among the oldest cars there. A peacock blue 1956 Thunderbird, a 1958 Alfa Giulietta Spider, and a 1963 Abarth-Simca 1300 with real Targa Florio history added some charm. Racing pedigree showed up everywhere you looked: the Penske Lola T70 Mk3B that Mark Donohue and Chuck Parsons drove to victory at Daytona in 1969, a one-of-one 1972 Lola T310 Can-Am car, and Adam Carroll's Ferrari-powered A1GP Team Ireland championship car. Muscle cars made noise too, with an orange GTO Judge, a 1965 Dodge Coronet A990 drag car discovered with only 843 miles on it, a couple of Land Rovers parked in the bunkers, and a Meyers Manx sitting in the sand. A Koenigsegg Agera RS handled hypercar duty.
Sunday opened things up a bit. Cars & Coffee at the Bridgehampton Museum brought more than 270 cars out for the public, with Smorgasburg food and live jazz on the lawn. That evening, 500 guests gathered in the gardens at Topping Rose House for a Chopard-sponsored dinner cooked by Jean-Georges Vongerichten, with proceeds going to the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons.
The Bridge still isn't trying to be Pebble Beach East. It's rarefied, sure, capped around 3,000 people, but the tone stays loose and conversational rather than stiff. Cars that once raced this ground now sit parked on the fairways that replaced the track. For one weekend a year, Bridgehampton remembers what it used to be, and nobody needs a trophy to prove they were there.
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