Detroit Concours d’Elegance 2025 Canceled: Will Hagerty Bring It Back, and Why Its Loss Matters to the Motor City
September 14 @ 10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Free
The Hagerty Detroit Concours d’Elegance has been canceled for 2025. The decision to cancel the event was made by Hagerty, which had been managing the event since 2022 when they moved it to Detroit from its previous location at the St. John’s golf course in Plymouth, Michigan.
The cancellation was partly due to challenges in attracting sufficient sponsor support and quality vehicles for the show. Despite its cancellation, Hagerty remains committed to other events, like RADwood, which is still scheduled to take place on September 14, 2025, at Hart Plaza.
The Hagerty Detroit Concours d’Elegance at the Detroit Art Institute has been canceled for 2025 with no plans for a new start date.
Radwood At Hart Plaza Downtown Detroit – CANCELLED!!!
Detroit’s Concours Story: How the Motor City’s Automotive Heritage Was Once Celebrated and Why Its Loss Still Matters
Detroit’s Lost Concours Story: A Tradition Silenced!!!
The cancellation of the Detroit Concours d’Elegance is more than the disappearance of an event from the calendar—it is the loss of a tradition that connected Detroit to its proud automotive soul. In a city that gave the world the automobile, to be left without even a single concours is nothing short of tragic.
It is not simply the end of a show; it is the quieting of a heritage that once stood tall as the heartbeat of the Motor City.
Detroit has always been more than just another city. It was here that Henry Ford perfected the assembly line, turning the Model T into a machine for the masses and changing the course of modern life.
From Detroit rolled out the great marques that defined entire eras: Cadillac’s elegance, Dodge’s toughness, Chrysler’s ingenuity, and GM’s vast portfolio of innovation.
The automobile built Detroit, and Detroit built the automobile. For that reason alone, it seems unthinkable that the city no longer has a concours to honor its legacy.
The History of Detroit’s Concours
To understand the weight of this cancellation, one must return to the origins of Detroit’s concours tradition. It began in 1979 with the Meadow Brook Concours d’Elegance, held on the sprawling grounds of the historic Meadow Brook Hall in Rochester, Michigan.
Built between 1926 and 1929 by Matilda Dodge Wilson, widow of auto pioneer John Dodge (yes, Dodge cars), Meadow Brook Hall was a fitting backdrop for a grand Concours d’Elegance and a celebration of the automobile.
Its Tudor-revival architecture, manicured lawns, and connection to the Dodge family made it a venue steeped in automotive history.
Meadow Brook Hall in Rochester, Michigan, was built between 1926 and 1929 by Matilda Dodge Wilson, widow of automobile pioneer John Dodge, and her second husband, Alfred Wilson. Constructed for $4 million, it is a 110-room, 88,000-square-foot example of Tudor Revival architecture, and is now a National Historic Landmark.
The Meadow Brook Concours quickly grew into one of the nation’s most prestigious shows, often considered on par with Pebble Beach. Rare classics, brass-era automobiles, and one-off concept cars lined the estate, while the event itself expanded into a weekend-long lifestyle experience.
For collectors and enthusiasts, it became a pilgrimage—a place where history, elegance, and community merged.
In 2011, the event moved from Meadow Brook to The Inn at St. John’s in Plymouth, Michigan, adopting the new name Concours d’Elegance of America. Though the setting changed, the purpose remained: to showcase the finest automobiles ever created and to celebrate Detroit’s unmatched role in shaping automotive history.
For a decade, the Concours d’Elegance of America carried on this tradition, drawing crowds and world-class cars to Michigan each summer.
Hagerty’s Ownership
When Traverse City-based specialty auto insurance company Hagerty assumed ownership in 2021, many hoped the company would carry forward Detroit’s Concours tradition as it was moved downtown to the Detroit Institute of Arts.
As an insurance and lifestyle brand, Hagerty has done much to promote automotive enthusiasm, but the Detroit Concours was different.
Housed in the Detroit Institute of Arts, Diego Rivera’s monumental Detroit Industry Murals are recognized worldwide as symbols of Detroit’s legacy as the Motor City and a global center of industrial and automotive innovation
The Detroit Concours was never meant to be just another weekend car show. Its relocation to the Detroit Institute of Arts gave it profound cultural weight, staged in the shadow of Diego Rivera’s world-famous 1933 Detroit Industry Murals. Few venues could better symbolize the Motor City’s unmatched legacy in car culture and automotive history.
Instead, the event lost its identity. In an effort to appeal to a younger audience, new categories were introduced—RADwood for 1980s and 1990s cars, Concours d’Lemons for oddball vehicles, along with youth-focused activities such as Ride & Drive and Youth Judging
These programs had merit in the broader car culture, but in Detroit they felt out of place. The Detroit Concours shifted away from honoring automotive ledgions such as of Cadillac, Chrysler, Dodge, and Ford, and toward chasing trends that diluted the show’s purpose.
Hagerty may be an expert at insuring cars and building lifestyle products, but shepherding an event of such historical weight required more than marketing tactics. It required an understanding of Detroit itself—its heritage, its triumphs, its struggles, and its standing as the auto capital of the world.
By canceling the Detroit Concours only a few years after its downtown debut, Hagerty revealed it never truly understood what this event meant, not only to collectors but to the city that gave birth to the automobile industry.
The decision was more than unfortunate—it diminished Detroit’s standing as the epicenter of automotive culture, leaving the Motor City, of all places, without a concours to honor its history. In the end, the cancellation reflected not a lack of passion among enthusiasts, but a lack of vision at the top.
EyesOn Design, hosted each Father’s Day at the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House, celebrates Detroit’s legacy of automotive design
Yet, perhaps the saving grace for metro Detroit is the EyesOn Design Car Show, held each Father’s Day at the historic Edsel & Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores. Unlike the concours, this long-standing event continues to celebrate automotive design excellence, providing the region with at least one showcase that honors Detroit’s creative spirit and connection to the automobile.
The Downtown Debut
In 2021, Hagerty rebranded the Concours d’Elegance of America as the Detroit Concours d’Elegance and moved it into the heart of the city. The Detroit Institute of Arts provided a dramatic backdrop, and for a brief moment it seemed as if the concours might become a crown jewel for Detroit—a cultural festival worthy of the Motor City’s proud heritage.
Detroit Concours dElegance 2023 at Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) on Woodward Downtown Detroit
But just a few short years later, the Detroit Concours was gone. Its quiet cancellation leaves a void that feels larger than the event itself. It marks the end of a lineage that stretched from the grandeur of Meadow Brook Hall, to the decade at St. John’s, to the brief attempt at reinvention downtown.
Each iteration reflected a city trying to preserve and celebrate its automotive legacy. Now, that continuity is broken, and with it, a vital piece of Detroit’s story risks being forgotten.
A Stark Contrast
The irony is unavoidable. Hagerty continues to oversee other world-class concours events—Pebble Beach Concoursd’Elegance, Amelia Island Concours , and Greenwich Concours among them—all of which thrive under their stewardship, drawing collectors and enthusiasts from across the globe.
Yet Detroit, the very birthplace of the automobile, has been left behind. Nowhere else carries the same historical weight, yet it is Detroit that no longer has a concours to call its own.
This stark contrast underscores the inadequacy of Hagerty’s vision for Detroit. What flourishes elsewhere has been allowed to wither here, in the one city where such a celebration should be considered sacred.
For Detroit—the Motor City, the global symbol of automotive innovation—the loss of its concours is more than an organizational failure. It is a cultural and automotive heritage wound.
The Detroit Concours was more than an event; it was a mirror reflecting Detroit’s automotive dominance, heritage, pedigree, and culture.
From the historic Dodge Estate at Meadow Brook Hall to the urban streets near the Detroit Institute of Arts, it stood as a living reminder of what the automobile means.
Not only to the city of Detroit, but also to America and to the world. Its cancellation is a silence we should not accept lightly.
Detroit deserves better. This is the city where Henry Ford built his first automobile, the Quadricycle, in 1896 in a small shed on Bagley Avenue. From that humble beginning, Detroit became the automotive capital of the world, home to Cadillac, Chrysler, Dodge, and General Motors.
A city with such a legacy deserves to celebrate it—not with faint memories, but with a concours that honors its past, inspires its present, and secures its place in the future of automotive culture. Until that happens, the loss of Detroit’s concours will remain a wound in the history of car collecting and a reminder of just how fragile even the proudest traditions can be..
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