Every August the Monterey Peninsula is a destination for luxury autos to shine in a show of pageantry that incorporates the past, present, and future. It’s officially known as Monterey Car Week set in a backdrop that draws from the region’s lavish modern architectural homes and California oceanfront vistas. The marquee event is the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance that first sparked this gathering decades ago. The Concours d’Elegance dates back to 1951 when American car enthusiasm in the post-World War II era was its pinnacle. The original Concours attracted an insular group of pre-war car collectors dedicated to the preservation of early 20th-century automotive history. As car culture evolved over the decades, the cars it celebrated eventually followed suit as the appeal to see and show cars spread across the peninsula.
Monterey Car Week 2024
Monterey Car Week is now an essential stop on the automotive calendar, replacing regional auto shows as the place and space to unveil new six-figure cars on modern properties and where high-dollar cars cross the auction block. Automakers invest heavily in Pebble Beach to capture some of the dizzying car enthusiasm and luxe lifestyle suited to the ethos of this gated community. Invites and access shape the experience, a hallmark of elite collector communities, where race car driving legends mill about with car designers and the occasional Hollywood actor. Return visitors call the week “Pebble” in reference to the juried Concours, which has grown by leaps since I first attended in the early-2000s. The most challenging part of navigating the car scene in this most recent edition was getting around all the traffic. Teenage fans lined the area roads to capture footage of their favorite supercars passing by or parked conspicuously at the Inn at Spanish Bay. Car Week is still exclusive, but its reach extends beyond the car-collecting elite.
The Lincoln 2025 Navigator
Courtesy of Lincoln.
Early in car week, Lincoln unveiled its redesigned 2025 Navigator at a scenic modern home in Carmel Valley overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Interior designer Corey Damen Jenkins reimagined the home’s furnishings to reflect Lincoln’s high-end trim combinations as the Sanctuary House. To capture the vibe of modern minimalist trims such as Black Label, Jenkins selected a chenille sofa with leather piping and high-backed chairs adjacent to a brass work by Canadian artist Martha Sturdy. Lush plants served as table settings. “It’s a very clean modern monochromatic aesthetic to honor the beauty of the Navigator,” Jenkins said. Lincoln pulled out all the stops to launch the Navigator. Serena Williams flew in to introduce the vehicle alongside Lincoln designers and executives.
The Mercedes-Maybach SL 680 Monograph
Courtesy of Mercedez-Maybach.
The following day Mercedes-Benz built a runway for the reveal of the Mercedes-Maybach SL 680 Monograph in a home conceived by architect Peter Jennings. The two-seater convertible is the first sports car for the modern Maybach brand that has historic roots in classic touring cars. The Maybach SL drove down the catwalk for its arrival. It’s built upon the Mercedes-Benz SL architecture and includes ornate features such as a monogrammed two-tone opal and garnet painted hood, gleaming white Nappa leather interior swathed on the seats, and a powerful 577-horsepower engine.
Down the road at other Pebble Beach modern properties, Maserati showed off the MC20 GT2 Stradale, while Lamborghini revealed its Temerario, the replacement for the Huracan supercar.
The “Quail: A Motorsports Reunion” Event
Maserati, photo by Tamara Warren.
On Friday morning, tickets went fast for the “Quail: A Motorsports Reunion,” a champagne-filled garden party where automakers and small boutique luxe car brands staged booths at the Peninsula hotel property. Guests strolled from car to car as collector-driven panel discussions took place on stage. I watched the artist and former car designer Camilo Pardo sign the engine of a Ford GT40 and copies of the poster he designed for the event. Automobili Pininfarina showed off the Battista Targamerica.
RUF, a Bavarian small sports car manufacturer modeled after Porsche, unveiled a six-speed manual signal orange Ruf Rodeo inspired by Native American craft, cowboy culture, and Ralph Lauren RRL Ranch. The brand even passed out branded cowboy hats to dial up this motif. and RUF creative director Aloisa Ruf and former mechanic shared her vision for the company’s newest merch collaboration with High Snobiety. “Automotive is where my heart lays,” she told me. “I see cars as an extension of ourselves, as an extension of the persona we’d like to take on when we drive those cars, and I think it’s really fun to work with fashion houses to bring elements of automotive into fashion.
Over the weekend, car gatherings of every variety were held on the peninsula. Motorsports fans flocked to the Weathertech Raceway at Laguna Seca for vintage racing. I watched Ford’s CEO Jim Farley win his race in a 1964 Shelby Cobra on Saturday morning. Collectors attended the live auctions, where despite all the enthusiasm for vintage cars, sales stayed flat this year. Standouts included a $30.25 million 1967 Ferrari 412P sold at Bonhams, a $13.2 million 1957 Jaguar XKSS Roadster sold by RM Sotheby’s, and a 1962 Ferrari 250 GT SWB Coupe that hammered for $9,465,000 at the Gooding & Company tent.
“I see cars as an extension of ourselves, as an extension of the persona we’d like to take on when we drive those cars,”
—Aloisa Ruf
Photo by Tamara Warren.
The main event — the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance — capped off car week on Sunday at the Pebble Beach Lodge, best known for its world-class golf course. The cars rolled in at dawn, and eventually, the course filled with thousands of people who bought tickets to get a close look at the field of cars selected for the rotating categories. Weird-looking 1960s and ‘70s wedge cars, and Queen Elizabeth’s Land Rover collection were among the crowd favorites. Wandering the field, I chatted with a customizer who walked me through the painstaking work of gussying up the original parts on a brilliant red 1967 Bizzarrini 5300 GT Strada Series that took second in the Postwar Sports class.
Photo by Tamara Warren.
Bugatti’s Best in Show at Pebble Beach
The big news at Pebble this year was when the 1934 Bugatti Type 59 Sports, owned by Fritz Burkard of The Pearl Collection in Zug, Switzerland, took the coveted Best in Show category. The award broke boundaries as the first car in the preservation class to win top honors.
I chatted with Brett Berk, an automotive historian and author, about what made the winning vehicle distinct from years past. “This follows the same pattern as in other categories collectibles such as fine art, furniture, and architecture, where allowing an objet to maintain its entropic narrative—the tale of its life, writ large on its physical being—is part of what adds value and historical context,” Berk said. “As they say, ‘a car can be restored repeatedly, but it can only be original once.’ This reflects shifting tastes among judges and attendees, but also a recognition that the so-called Classic interwar era is becoming more and more distant, and that the Concours must adapt and change with the times to remain relevant to contemporary collectors.”
“This is a marked achievement for the collector car community,”
—Brett Berk
Soon after the judges awarded the winning Bugatti, the confetti and balloons dissipated, and the crowd rushed off to their cars to sit in endless traffic along 17 Mile Drive, marking the finale of Monterey Car Week, where a traffic jam can be a delightful car show.
Photo by Tamara Warren.
