The mood within the automotive industry remains steamed – and this also applies in the United States. Take a close look and you will also feel it in the Monterey Car Week, the highlight of the chassis calendar. Over 100,000 fans visit constant enthusiasm, and every car manufacturer with something that can prove themselves. No traditional automotive exhibition can compete.
Events like this on the California coast are exactly what Europe wishes: unsurpassed atmosphere, lively car culture and a common joy for everything automobiles. In the third week of August, the Monterey Car Week pulls well over 100,000 fans from all over the world to the west coast of the United States and transforms the otherwise quiet region for the luxury declave of Pebble Beach into something that bursts at the seams. For an intensive week, enthusiasts along the 17-mile ride, the Cannery Row and the Cabrillo Highway in coordinated Supercars from Lamborghini, Porsche, Ferrari, Koenigsegg, Bugatti, Aston Martin, McLaren and Corvette-All Hope to start the spotlight along their Dream machines.
It is a festival for all strips of enthusiasts. Classics -Car -Devotees celebrate in countless Concours events, while the Supercar Club members appear their latest and rarest acquisitions. Nowhere else can car potters fake on so many individual threads, hypercars and ultra-exclusive classics. Rimac Nevera, Lamborghini Revuelto, Ferrari 250 GTO, Porsche Carrera GT, Mercedes 300 SL Gullwing, Bentley Blower-All These multimillion euro dream cars become part of the everyday landscape for a few days. Human quantities gather along traffic -fighted access roads, especially outside of luxury hotels, to admire them. Fans of the German engineering gather in Legends of the Autobahn, while Italian car lovers spend two days at Concorso Italiano. Those who arrive in rust buckets or rackets go to the wonderfully speaking concours de lemons in Seaside, fell after exotic on Broadway or visit one of many fan meetings in the valley. Peter, for example, drove his 1981 Mercedes 380 SEL from Austin to Pacific Grove – as he does every year. “There is nothing comparable anywhere else,” beams the 34-year-old Texaner, who sleeps in the country to save money at $ 200 a night for a simple motel. High-end hotels easily get $ 1,000 per night or more.
The mood is alive and the amount is larger than in previous years. Long before the official weekend, the triangle burst between Big Sur, Monterey and the Laguna Seca racing route in the seams. Despite the help of voluntary, local authorities and careful planning, the day of the day will often come to a standstill. The most popular events remain the quail and the Grand Concours d’Elegance on Pebble Beach Golf’s 18th Fairway, where, in addition to modern show stopper, presented before the classic war. But behind the smile of carb-obsessed children and experienced collectors there is a quieter truth: most European premium manufacturer and especially the German trays, especially at the high-end-pebble beach events.
Not so Lamborghini. They used the quail to present the Fenomeno 3 million euros, its latest limited hypercar. “The Monterey Car Week and the quail are the perfect place to present our innovations,” explains CEO Stephan Winkelmann. “Nowhere else are the surroundings, the weather, the market and the customers are just as much as here.”
This absence of German, British and Korean brands left the stage open – not only the niche players such as Czinger, singer, Pagani, Alpina, Ruf or Meyers Manx – but also to Lexus, Honda, Bentley and Cadillac, omnipotence on the sunshine between putting and a call. Even top auction houses such as RM Sotheby’s, Mecum and Gooding & Co. adapt to a shift market.
The classics before the war and the 50s/60s are no longer a guaranteed sale to younger audiences. Instead, icons of the 80s and 90s, such as the Lancia Delta Integrale, Porsche 959 and Ferraris in Limited edition, are now picking up record sums.
For those who outbid at the auction, the redemption could be in the Del Monte Avenue in Monterey, where the cult dealer Dodi can send their vintage-Porsche home within days-or you could recognize their next car on a hotel forecourt with a handwritten sign in the window.
