Monterey Car Week / Pebble Beach 2015

[DavidL]

This year I was fortunate enough to make it out to Monterey for Thursday to Sunday of Car Week. It has been on the vacation list for a couple years, and with my cousin living out in San Francisco for the summer, the pieces fit together just enough to make it work!

I flew out on Wednesday night, and spent Thursday and Friday bouncing between shows, drives and auction houses in Carmel and Monterey. First thing to note about the trip... for the week of Pebble, Monterey Peninsula becomes playground for America's richest car guys. Cars are trucked in from all over the US for their owners to rip around town - Literally every open field in town is packed full of car carriers and closed trailers. As a result, seemingly every third car you see on the roads is some sort of exotic... it is obscene. At one point, while I was innocently eating lunch on a bench in central Carmel, a black LaFerrari absolutely tore ass up the central avenue in town... with a white McLaren F1 right behind him. Its really hard to avoid getting jaded. Oh, a red F430? Sorry you are so poor...

Thursday morning was the Tour D'Elegance, where most of Sunday's show field drives a loop out from Pebble to Laguna Seca and back through Carmel. It's quite the experience to see some of the world's most prestigious show cars cruising around 17 Mile Drive.... a lot of the participants like to dress in period correct clothing as well, which is pretty awesome. I checked out RM Sothebys auction lot on Thursday after the Tour - they had a ridiculous collection of cars to go across the block in the weekend. An F50, Enzo, XJ220, 959, McLaren F1 LM (sold for something like $14m?), MC12, Reventon etc etc, not to mention the bevy of obscenely priced 60s Ferraris... Also, I found a familiar-looking bald headed man checking out the Koenigsegg they had for sale - turns out Christian likes some summer California vacations like the rest of us!

Friday was the Porsche Werks Reunion, put on by the PCA. Pretty much any Porsche you could possible imagine was in attendance. At the same time, just a couple miles down the road they held the Quail Gathering - another one of the multiple shows held over the weekend. Tickets were a little pricey for the Quail, but I had heard the parking lot was show enough... it did not disappoint.

Here are some of the highlights from Thursday and Friday.... More to come on Saturday at Laguna Seca and Sunday at Pebble.