For the first time ever, I attended Monterey Car Week this year, flying straight in from two days of grit and grime testing the new Polaris Off-Road Vehicles 2022 model year lineup in Minnesota. But after that wild trip, I had to clean up quickly in preparation for the most prestigious automotive gathering of the calendar year—especially because among Monterey's events, my planned visit to The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering on Friday stood out as the most exclusive, most ostentatious, and most exciting.
On a pristine golf course in Carmel, the world's most expensive cars—old and new—gather for a full day of festivities, where tickets can easily cost four figures, celebrities announce new hypercars and supercars, and the champagne flows freely (thanks to that steep price of entry). Luckily, I received an invitation to join The Quail by lining up a few interviews on site, so on Friday morning, I duly pulled out the fancy duds (which for me means a button-down over black jeans, instead of a t-shirt) and fought through an automotive enthusiast's fantasy traffic jam just hoping to find a good spot parking on the fairway.
Parking On The Quail's Golf Course
Friday actually began hours earlier for me, as I checked out Porsche Werks Reunion at Bayonet and Black Horse golf course further north towards Seaside. Then, I swung through Mecum's 2021 auction in Monterey proper where I met Chris Theodore, who developed the Shelby Cobra concept nicknamed "Daisy" in partnership with the "Chicken Farmer from Texas" himself, and also watched a Duesenberg crack $2 million after some exciting bidding action. But I had to leave both events early to keep up with my schedule, not to mention Car Week's profoundly frustrating traffic and parking problems.
The parking lot alone at an event like The Quail always provides plenty of entertainment and I found myself chuckling while slow-cruising a 1997 BMW M3 with peeling paint across the perfectly manicured lawns before rolling to a stop surrounded by handfuls of modern McLarens. After grabbing my camera and recording equipment, I watched as the famous Baja 911 build above nudged forward until a knobby front tire dangled into one of The Quail Lodge & Golf Club's impeccable bunkers—only to discover behind the wheel Ace Robey (aka @acethecollector) who I'd met earlier this year watching a McLaren Senna GTR shakedown during his Exclusive Track Days event at Sonoma Raceway. The Baja 911 didn't belong to him, Ace explained, but to builder TJ Russell (of Singer fame) who figured that driving the creation around Monterey Car Week (and parking it aggressively at The Quail) might attract attention in advance of a potential sale (now underway at the cool price of $550,000). Unfortunately, The Quail's security team felt less enthusiastic than did we about the prospect of leaving the 911 in such perfectly Instagrammable fashion, so Ace pulled it back entirely onto the grass.
A Quick Visit With Lucid Motors
The first item on my schedule for The Quail came about after I previously interviewed multiple members of the Lucid Motors executive team over the past year, including VP of Design and Brand Derek Jenkins, VP of Marketing, Communications, and Product Planning Jeff Curry, and Senior Director of Retail Operations Zak Edson. Jenkins and Curry both traveled to The Quail, as did former Tesla Model S Vehicle Engineer and current Lucid Motors CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson, who shared with me his recent efforts hammering out the final fit and finish of the forthcoming Air sedan. Jenkins, meanwhile, revealed his current focus on Lucid's next vehicle, the Gravity SUV, which will employ similar design language in a more spacious, more utilitarian vehicle.
Meeting with Rawlinson and Jenkins also gave me a chance to pick their brains in advance of an early test ride the next morning around the hills of Monterey in a pre-production version of the Lucid Air Grand Touring, which Jenkins himself actually drove (at the time, no journalists had ever gotten to hop behind the wheel).
The Electric Future And... Hennessey Performance
Somewhat hilariously, directly next to the Lucid display at The Quail sat Hennessey Performance and a pair of highly awaited Venom F5 hypercars. I laughed with Rawlinson and Jenkins about the borderline absurd disparity between the quintessential Texas bigger-is-better mentality leading to the Venom F5's massively powerful internal-combustion engines (which they fired up numerous times directly next to our eardrums). Meanwhile, parked quietly nearby, a four-door super sedan will offer 95% of the performance in a nearly silent package, hopefully sparking the next generation of electric evolution with unprecedented range and efficiency—all in the hopes of helping humanity move away from the destructive addiction to fossil fuels typified by the entire history of automotive engineering on display at The Quail (and towards a future also on display at The Quail, albeit, hopefully, in a more affordable fashion).
I did take the opportunity to ask both Rawlinson and Jenkins about Lucid's future plans for production and, specifically, battery sustainability and circularity, or what they plan to do with all the Air powertrains once the batteries eventually degrade past the point of peak performance. To their credit, neither shirked the subject but instead focused on repurposing rather than recycling the batteries, as static storage solutions for home and commerical applications.
Chatting With The Radford Crew
A stone's through from Lucid, Lotus set up a display of three cars that perfectly demonstrate the brand's recognition of the electric revolution, in the form of the Evija, as well as celebration of the internal-combustion era in the form of the Emira, and a newly unveiled collaboration with the revived retro-focused coachbuilder Radford. Helmed by reality TV star Ant Anstead and F1 world champion Jenson Button, as well as former Lotus Engineering Commercial Director Dan Burge and lawyer-cum-advisor Roger Behle, Radford already notched a massive PR victory unveiling the 62-2 and the trio revealed plans to build at least three more vehicles after the new car on display at The Quail.
In a quick interview, Anstead, Button, and Behle shared the origins of the 62-2, their partnership with Lotus, and cleared up some of the early confusion surrounding the project's Exige underpinnings. I also got a chance to sit in the Emira, which a maniacally gear-focused friend of mine already pre-ordered—so I had to send him a few teaser pics, even just in the right-hand-drive car on display.
A Chance To Wander
After getting a chance to revise the record on Radford, I had the rest of the afternoon to wander around checking out all the incredible cars in attendance at The Quail. Vehicles of the past, present, and future all blurred the line between all-out performance, style, and futuristic potential. From a Ford GT to a Venturi 400 and a Lincoln Anniversary Concept, every single vehicle deserved more time than I could afford to spend given the packed day's timeframe.
SSC Tuatara In The Flesh
My hasty rush through the best of the rest slowed to a stop, however, when I spotted the exact SSC Tuatara that broke the Koenigsegg Agera RS's two-way speed record earlier this year with verified runs at Kennedy Space Station averaging 282.9 miles per hour. I spoke with owner and driver Dr Larry Caplin days after he set that world record and had hoped to visit the car in person at his CF Charities Supercar Show in Philadelphia earlier this summer. Unfortunately, the Tuatara suffered a trailer rollover necessitating extensive cosmetic repairs, which SSC managed to complete in time for The Quail.
Dr Caplin took the opportunity to introduce Jerod Shelby, SSC's eponymous founder (no relation to Carroll), and though both remained somewhat cagey about concrete plans for a return to Cape Canaveral, the car sounds likely to make news in the near future after sufficient mechanical checks to ensure that a car shooting for 300 miles per hour remains in more-perfect-than-perfect condition.
Stopping For Food At Ferrari's Designated Area
Of course, Ferrari owners in Prancing Pony hats, shirts, and loafers showed up in droves at The Quail, fully expecting (and receiving) their own section of the event. I expected a chance to check out the newly unveiled 296 GTB, which marks a shift from Ferrari towards a (relatively) lower-priced hybrid supercar with a turbo V6 in comparison to the now-iconic LaFerrari. But perhaps a V6 simply doesn't fit into The Quail's best-of-the-best recipe—the Ferrari section's closest food tent, on the other hand, cranked out excellent recipes of, somewhat surprisingly, Greek delicacies (with the champagne flowing, as everywhere).
Celebrities And Bugattis Everywhere
Of course, including each and every incredible car and display that showed up at The Quail remains entirely impossible, though other highlights of the day included a Bugatti Bolide (being checked out by Adam Carolla) as well as Bugatti's new business owner, Rimac, which showed off the electric Nevera hypercar that somehow prompted such a massive deal between Volkswagen AG, Porsche, and the upstart Croation company.
Automotive Minds Coming Together
The meeting of minds at The Quail allowed for Bugatti and Rimac to set up opposing displays across from each other, but I also ran across Rawlinson again, as he climbed nearly all the way underneath the carbon-fiber clamshell of a Koenigsegg while receiving an informational introduction from none other than Christian von Koenigsegg himself. Koenigsegg's advanced, camless ICE tech and suspension setups seemed to dominate the conversation at hand, though I still needed to keep moving so I probably missed most of the topics these two covered.
A Carolla And A Countach
I spied Carolla again, too, this time checking out the newly unveiled Lamborghini Countach LPI 800-4, a limited run of only 112 Aventador-based examples bearing a traditional Lambo V12 complemented by a mild hybrid system. Divisive from the get-go, the Countach seems to hail (yet another) farewell to the internal-combustion era from Lamborghini, even if just about everyone can agree that it should, at the very least, have pop-up headlights.
Classics Dotting The Fairway
The corportate nature of The Quail, where so many supercar and hypercar manufacturers showed off six and seven-figure products that are, or soon will be, for sale detracts some of the aura from the historically significant cars on display. The minimal crowds surrounding gorgeous old Bentleys, sleek and swooping Ferrari racers, and various air-cooled Porsches further point to the trend—compared to the pristine displays and booming sound systems, the cars above just looked piled together on the grass haphazardly. For the record, Best in Show went to a 1938 Mercedes-Benz 540K Special Roadster, while the somewhat capricious The Spirit of The Quail Award went to a 1902 Indian Single Cylinder motorcycle.
A Smattering Of Hot Rods
Without a doubt, most of the cars at The Quail hailed from Europe (even, it could very well be argued, the handful of different Ford GT40s on the lawn). But a few true-blood American classics and a smattering of hot rods even got the chance to rev their engines, as did the Parnelli Jones "Big Oly" Bronco that recently sold for $1.87 million at Mecum Auctions and also earned the Hagerty Drivers Foundation & Preservation Award at The Quail.
All in all, the rush of an afternoon left me wanting for more time to wander—and possibly partake in the partying with a few glasses of champagne—but somehow, moseying around amid the overwhelming ostentatious and opulent theatrics counted as work for me. With the world facing inconceivable crisis after unbelievable distaster on an almost daily basis, perhaps sarcasm and self-deprecation served as the only way the self-aware attendees at The Quail could describe their time: I overhead plenty of laughing lines like, "Isn't this awful?" and "This rosé is terrible."
Typically, at meetups where the average value of a car could easily support multiple families for multiple years, I console myself with the perspective that at least the world's wealthiest enthusiasts spend their money keeping incredible vehicles in good enough condition to share with the rest of us—at The Quail, even such sunny silver linings felt like a bit of a stretch.
Maybe some bubbly would have helped me lighten up and take in the scene more appreciatively after the inevitable let-down following such personally exciting interviews. Then again, I next faced the prospect of driving one of the world's greatest driver's cars, an E36 M3, over the Laureles Grade to Laguna Seca, where I planned to get back into the grit and grime by camping for the night right next to the track. And all sarcasm aside, when I passed a six-figure McLaren redlining that S52 inline-six up the hill, I'm pretty sure the sub-$20,000 Bimmer left me smiling far more than the 720S's tentative, clearly concerned owner behind the wheel.
Sources: peninsula.com, quaillodge.com, instagram.com, russellbuiltfab.com, lucidmotors.com, and sscnorthamerica.com.