Postcard from Monterey Car Week

There were three of us – proper car enthusiasts all – in the big Chevy Suburban, rumbling back into town after attending the car show at Quail Lodge. Driving past a gas station, we spotted a banana yellow Lamborghini Murciélago doors up at the pumps.

We all saw it, yet no one said a thing. In a place where there’s a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR streamliner (estimated value $100 million) and one of just 19 ‘pontoon’ Ferrari Testa Rossas (around $40 million) parked in the lobby of your hotel, such minor distractions are no longer remotely noteworthy.

Welcome, then, to the wacky, often wonderful and no less frequently plain weird world of Monterey Car Week.

Day One: The Quail, Friday 16 August

Or, technically, ‘The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering’, even though the vast majority of cars on display had nothing whatsoever to do with the sport. To give you an idea of what this event is like, you can do little better than learn how one goes about getting a ticket. Six months ago the organisers opened a lottery which anyone could enter. If you were one of the lucky winners, you didn’t get a ticket, merely the right to buy a ticket.