A Monterey Car Week Preview

What I look forward to seeing next week and a few words of wisdom for first timers.

For the past decade I have known, with relative certainly, where I’ll be each year come mid-August. Monterey Car Week, or simply “Car Week” as it is colloquially known in the auto-community, has a gravitational pull that’s nearly impossible to escape, though I did manage to do so in 2017 in order to road-trip to Wyoming and see the total eclipse. Only Goodwood Festival of Speed and Goodwood Revival, which take place annually in southern England, come close to inspiring the level of fervor found in Monterey County during the weeklong celebration of all things automotive. What started as an SCCA sanctioned race on the tight and twisting roads of Del Monte Forest in 1950, with the inaugural Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance also staged that year primarily to promote new sports cars of the day(go figure), grew to include the friendly, albeit competitive, racing of vintage sports cars at Laguna Seca Raceway starting in 1974, as well as multiple high-end auctions and variety of more genre specific car shows, cruises, parties and meets.

The dates have shifted slightly over the years and for obvious reasons everything was cancelled in 2020, but generally speaking if you’re into automotive culture, Monterey is the place to be between the second and third week of August. And no, you don’t need to try and spend a few thousand dollars on a ticket to The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering or even a couple hundred on a ticket to the Pebble Beach Concours in order to have a great time.