Amelia has become one of the top auto shows in the world, and it seems to mark the end of winter and the beginning of spring because it is held in early March. This year’s event was March 12-14. The show itself is on Sunday, but several collector-car auctions and driving events take place on the days before.

This year’s show was the 15^th annual, and 18,000 visitors strolled among the cars that were parked on the golf course.

Walking the grounds of the hotel for three days is a treat because there are so many exotic and expensive cars on display. Rolls-Royce, Bugatti, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Tesla and Aston-Martin all had their cars at the event, and many were available for test drives.

Before dawn on Sunday morning, cars begin their entry onto the show field. This year there were 275 that had to be in place by the time the gates opened to the public at 9:30 a.m.

Even though the concours attracts some of the finest classic cars and historically most significant competition cars, this year’s entry list featured some very unusual one-off models that sprang from designer’s imaginations.

Clothing designer Andy Di Dia created Bobby Darin’s Dream Car, the Di Dia 150. This hand-built car, whose permanent home is the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis, took seven years to complete. It was started in 1953 and finished in 1960 at a cost $150,000. That would be equivalent to slightly less than $1 million in today’s dollars. The V-8-powered car rides on a 125-inch wheelbase, and its metallic red paint glistens like crushed diamonds. With huge rear fins, it looks like something George Jetson would drive. The car was donated to the museum three years after Darin’s death.

The Norman E. Timbs custom Buick Streamliner graced the cover of the October issue of Motor Trend magazine in 1949. Timbs, a Los Angeles auto engineer, commissioned this 17-foot-long two-seater. The car that is now owned by Gary and Diane Cerveny of Malibu, Calif., sat for years in the California sun. The Cervenys purchased the car in 2002, and Dave Crouse of Custom Auto in Loveland, Colo., has given it a fabulous restoration. The engine is an eight-cylinder Buick.

Gilda is the nickname given to the Ghia Streamline X turbine-powered prototype car of Scott Grundfor, owner of an auto restoration business in Arroyo Grande, Calif. The name came from the 1946 film Gilda, starring Rita Hayworth. Grundfor’s Web site reports “Hayworth was called the atomic speedboat for her sleek lines and dangerous appeal.”

The Italian Ghia show car made its debut in 1955 at the Turin Auto Show. It was designed to house a gas turbine engine, although one was not available at the time. Grundfor has installed a 70-horsepower gas turbine that drives the car through a hydrostatic fluid drive transmission. Because the car was built as a prototype, its speed is limited to little more than 30 miles per hour.