They are known as the Dawn Patrol – the rabid disciples who brave the chilly 6 a.m. ocean mist to witness the parade of some of the world's most cherished classic automobiles roll onto the 18th fairway of the Pebble Beach Golf Links.
"It's the thing to do," said Mark Greene, a resident of Gig Harbor, Wash., who's been coming here for 29 years. "You gotta be here for the Dawn Patrol.
"If you come later, you don't get to hear 'em, smell 'em."
By midday Sunday, more than 15,000 spectators were here, rubbing elbows with celebrities such as Jay Leno, Michael Strahan and Arnold Schwarzenegger and worshipping the gods of cast iron, leather and chrome. The nameplates represent the elite of car history: Duesenberg, Rolls-Royce, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Delahaye, Maserati, Aston Martin, Bentley, Bugatti, Ferrari and this year's featured brand: Isotta Fraschini, of Milan. Not a Chevy or a Dodge in sight.
Tourists from Argentina pose in a bronze-cast Bugatti 35 GP, created by artist Francois Chevalier and built in 2016.
A total of 204 rare vehicles were competing in 27 categories this year. Most of the classics here have been impeccably restored, but a handful are proudly in the raw. One is a 1927 Isotta Fraschini from the Canadian Automotive Museum in Oshawa, Ont. It has had only two owners; the second was Canadian business titan John (Bud) McDougald, whose widow donated it to the museum in 1995. Its cracked leather seats and incongruous 1950s-era aqua paint will remain untouched because that is the car's history, says Denis Bigioni, museum president.
"I love them unrestored," a passerby said. "They tell a better story."
This is the Mecca of classic-car shows. For 67 consecutive years, gearheads, stars and jet-setters have gathered to pay tribute to the classiest, most beautiful, homeliest, weirdest and most inventive creations from the great age of automobiles. In the same month The Economist magazine declared the imminent death of the internal-combustion engine, this crowd wants to hear none of it. It is showing nothing but love for one of the 20th century's great mechanical triumphs in all its oil-spewing, smoke-belching majesty.
No one seems to find irony in the fact a featured concept car, the Infiniti Q9, is a faithful update on 1940s-era race cars, except for one important detail: Instead of a massive ear-splitting supercharged V-8, its powerplant is a near-silent electric motor borrowed from the next-generation all-electric Nissan Leaf. Or that Volkswagen's I.D. Buzz electric van, promised for production, is also turning heads.
Matt Chambers, founder and CEO of Confederate Motorcycles, says this model will be the last to have an internal combustion engine.
Or that the six remaining Confederate Motorcycles (soon to be renamed Curtiss, to dodge recent political controversy) for sale during Monterey Car Week will be the last to have internal-combustion engines. "Look at this," said Matt Chambers, founder and chief executive of the Birmingham, Ala.-based company, as he flips through drawings of the electric prototype. "This is so clean. There isn't even a transmission."
Car week doesn't just take over this normally sleepy tourist town, it transforms it. Everywhere, there is the high-pitched whine and "blat, blat" of supertuned engines echoing off the walls of underpasses and downtown city streets. On those same streets, a burgundy late-1930s Talbot-Lago sits unattended, as if its owner just ran in to grab a Starbucks. Nearby, a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow is parked by the curb with a for-sale sign stuck in the window and a 1960s-era Amphicar – which runs on both land and water – is a magnet for tourists taking selfies. A block away, a gold-wrapped Mercedes shouts for attention. "Bad wrapping job," one passerby sniffed. "Why would somebody do that?" Pebble Beach does not suffer fools gladly.
The fanciful Amphicar was a British car from the 1960s that came with twin propellers and actually ran on land and in water.
Cars that would turn heads anywhere else are so plentiful, they feel as common as a Ford Focus. Lamborghinis and Ferraris travel in convoys as owners from U.S. auto clubs hook up for the weekend.
Owners also come here to get top dollar when they sell their rolling museum pieces. And they do. A 1956 Aston Martin DBR1 – the first of five ever made – was sold at Sotheby's RM auctions last Friday for $22.55-million (U.S.), the most any British automobile has sold for at auction. Meanwhile, an 1953 Abarth 1100 Sport with submarine-like Ghia coachwork and reportedly owned by a publicity-shy Canadian, fetched a cool $850,000.
The 1953 Abarth 1100 Sport with submarine-like Ghia coachwork fetched a cool $850,000 (U.S.).
Doug Firby
Canadian Tim Quocksister, who owns Silver Arrow Cars in Victoria, has been coming here for seven years and loves the choice of available vehicles.
"Everything's here," he said. "It's a great place to do business."
This year, he sold two cars: a 1992 Porsche 911 Carrera RS for $250,000 and a 1995 911 Carrera RS Club Sport for $370,000. He never imposes a reserve: "Whatever it sells for is what it's worth," he said. And he bought two cars: a 1960s-era Mini Cooper S and the Amphicar, for a client.
He paid $52,000 for the Mini. Is it worth it? "I'll know when I sell it," he said.
He also brought a friend, Laurence Gilman, former assistant general manager of the Vancouver Canucks, who seems dazzled by the spectacle.
"This is an unbelievable event," said Gilman, who drives a BMW back home.
History lives at the racetrack, as well. At the nearby Laguna Seca racetrack, Scott Spencer fidgets as he stands by his Mazda-powered 1985 Argo JM19 race car, anxiously awaiting the noon-hour heat he will compete in. Like his father, Dennis, before him, Scott has raced for most of his adult life.
Scott Spencer with his Mazda-powered 1985 Argo JM19 race car.
Spencer's car, a twin-rotary engine mounted in a British-built chassis, won the IMSA Prototype Lites Championship in 1985, 1986 and 1987 before his father bought it. After Dennis died in November, Scott, of Springville, Utah, inherited the car and still competes. He says a lot of classic-race-car owners baby their precious hardware – but not him.
"We're gonna pound these cars. We're out for blood."
Every car in Pebble Beach, Calif., has got game. To be here, they must run on their own power. Earlier in August, 30 of the chosen cars were driven on a 2,400-kilometre tour down the Pacific Northwest coast from Washington State to Pebble Beach. Last Thursday, 155 of the elite 200 chosen for the Concours d'Elegance made the 113-kilometre Tour d'Elegance drive.
European in style, in the predominance of brands and even in its name, the Concours seems to equate that continent with the sophistication 20th-century Americans sought to absorb through their machines. It seems fitting, then, that this year's best-of-show winner is a German: a 1929 Mercedes-Benz S Barker Tourer owned by Bruce McCaw, of Bellevue, Wash.
One exception to the European rule is the U.S.-made Kurtis, a yellow fibreglass and aluminum vehicle owned by Carol Kurtis, the widow of Arlen Kurtis. Arlen was the son of the company's founder. This 1949 sports car was designed and built by Frank Kurtis and given to Arlen as a teenager, but he sold it when he joined the Navy in U.S. 1952. Three decades later, Carol found the car in pieces in a scrapyard and bought it.
"It took my husband 21 years to restore it," she said. "I had to threaten to divorce to get him to finish it."
The author was a guest of Porsche Canada. Content was not subject to review.
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