MONTEREY CAR WEEK

Monterey Car Week is ten days of cars in August on the Monterey Peninsula, in California: historic racing at Laguna Seca, auctions through the week, gatherings on the lawns of Carmel Valley and Seaside, and, on the last Sunday, the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, to which the whole of it leads. Its oldest part is the Concours, from 1950; the historic races at Laguna Seca followed in 1974.

At Laguna Seca the old racing cars are raced, not parked, and there are no prizes for finishing first.

The Road Race

The tradition began in 1950, as an outgrowth of the Pebble Beach Road Race, and the Concours dates from that year. The road races ended after Ernie McAfee was killed in 1956, and from their end came Laguna Seca.

The course was built in 1957, for $1.5 million raised from local businesses and people, on part of the Army’s Fort Ord, after the road races at Pebble Beach were abandoned for being too dangerous. Its first race, on 9 November 1957, was won by Pete Lovely in a Ferrari. The name is Spanish for “dry lake”, and the track was laid round the bed of one: 2.238 miles, eleven turns and 180 feet of rise and fall. Its Corkscrew, Turns 8 and 8A, drops eighteen metres, with a blind crest and apex on the climb towards it and a gradient of up to sixteen per cent. The Corkscrew is now to carry the name of Alessandro Zanardi, who passed Bryan Herta there on the last lap of the 1996 CART race.

In 1974 Steve Earle organised a meeting for his friends to race their cars at Laguna Seca, and called it the Monterey Historic Automobile Races; it was the Monterey Historics until 2010, and is now the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion. Four hundred cars and more take part. The highest honour is the Rolex Spirit of Monterey Award, a Rolex and a painting by Bill Patterson. It was cancelled in 2020.

The rest of the week grew round the two. The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering, began at Quail Lodge & Golf Club in Carmel Valley in 2003 and is limited to two hundred cars; Concorso Italiano shows Italian cars on the Bayonet & Black Horse golf course at Seaside. Bonhams, Broad Arrow, Gooding Christie’s, Mecum and RM Sotheby’s all hold sales. In 2014 a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO sold for $38,115,000. About a hundred thousand people come.

The Week

It opens on the first weekend with the Pre-Reunion and the Corkscrew Hillclimb at Laguna Seca. The Reunion itself runs four days, from the Wednesday to the Saturday, and some passes open the paddock. On the Wednesday evening Motorlux is held at the Monterey Jet Center.

Thursday brings the Tour d’Elegance, from seven in the morning to noon, and the sales begin at Laguna Seca and in Monterey. Bonhams sells at Laguna Seca; RM Sotheby’s sells over three nights, Thursday to Saturday; Gooding Christie’s is the official auction house of the Concours and holds its Pebble Beach Auctions.

On the Friday The Quail opens its lawn from nine to four, with themed food pavilions and champagne without limit. Its director, Gordon McCall, says that “The Quail has created its own way of doing things”. Concorso Italiano follows on the Saturday, and the Concours closes the week on the Sunday.

In 2026 the week ran from 7 to 16 August. The Reunion’s featured marque was “Icons of Japanese Motorsport”, in Rolex’s twenty-fifth year as its partner. The auctions sold $747.9 million, a record, against $432.8 million the year before: Gooding Christie’s sold a 1964 Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe, once Carroll Shelby’s own, for $42,905,000, the highest price ever paid for an American car at auction, and RM Sotheby’s a new Ferrari Luce for charity at $40,000,000. Concorso Italiano had nearly six hundred cars, its largest field; The Quail marked the centenary of Route 66; and Clark Gable’s 1935 Duesenberg SSJ Special Speedster was Best of Show at the Concours.

What to Know

It runs through the middle of August and ends on the Sunday of the Concours. In 2027 the Concours is on Sunday 15 August, with the Tour d’Elegance on Thursday 12 August and the Gooding Christie’s sales from 11 to 14 August; the Reunion and The Quail have not announced their 2027 dates.

Each event sells its own tickets. A Saturday grounds-and-paddock pass for the Reunion cost $181.07 in 2026, with children of fifteen and under free. Tickets for The Quail cost about $1,500, by one account, and go by lottery to subscribers of the Quail Lodge events newsletter; “availability can disappear in a single morning”. In 2026 general admission to the Concours was $650, and hospitality ran to $5,000. The Pebble Beach Auctions are open to the public, but viewing and bidding require registration and fees.

A lounge suit. Nothing is published for the week as a whole; the Concours asks for an elevated resort casual, and the Court dresses a level above it.

Monterey Regional Airport is fifteen minutes from Pebble Beach; San Francisco is two to two and a half hours by road, San Jose one to one and a half. Free shuttles serve downtown Carmel midweek, a free trolley runs along Cannery Row in Monterey, and a paid shuttle runs from Carmel Plaza to the Concours. Stay at The Lodge at Pebble Beach, The Inn at Spanish Bay or Casa Palmero, or at Quail Lodge or Carmel Valley Ranch in the valley, and book months in advance.

The mistake is to drive between venues at the last minute. The visitors bureau warns of “heavy traffic, limited parking and longer travel times”, and in 2026 the 17-Mile Drive was closed to sightseeing traffic from the Thursday to the Sunday. “Leave early, plan your route and know where you’re parking before you arrive.”

The Court

Monterey Car Week is not the Court’s own. Paddock passes for the Reunion, tickets for The Quail and seats at the sales are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay at Pebble Beach or in Carmel Valley, and the table afterward. The week ends at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance on the Sunday.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.