THE MONTEREY CAR WEEK 2023

The annual Monterey Car Week has become bigger than ever. We take a brief glimpse of this annual celebration of all things motoring

- SIDDHRAJ SINGH

The Monterey Car Week is an amalgamation of an entire week of car activities based in and around the Monterey Peninsula, a few hours South of San Francisco, California. For a week, the small holiday town resonates with the exhaust notes of all types of cars and becomes a Mecca for the automotive enthusiast. Known more for classic and collector cars, the week has grown to include all other types of cars, including supercars, modern classics, and even lemons (a term given to particularly bad cars). The events range from the fun - historic racing as nearby Laguna Seca, the aforementioned Concours d'Lemons, to the most serious of them all, the week's tent pole event, the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance. Event tickets can range from free, to some eye-wateringly high dollar prices, but there seems to be something for everyone. Even the streets are filled with great and rare cars.

PEBBLE BEACH CONCOURS D'ELEGANCE 

There aren't enough superlatives to accurately describe the annual Pebble Beach Concours. For an event that is almost 75 years old, it just keeps going from strength to strength. It does somewhat help, that with each passing year, another set of cars are deemed classics. But to assemble a field of nearly 200 rare and desirable cars seems like an impossible task, yet each year the selection committee pulls out unseen cars from the woodwork.

This year was no different, celebrating flamboyant coachwork by Figoni et Falaschi; Mercedes S, SS and SSK cars and a number of manufacturer anniversaries including McLaren and Lamborghini, both younger than the event itself. The event kicked off with the Tour d'Elegance, a few days before; a 70-mile drive around Monterey including some steep hills, narrow roads and wide open sections of the world-famous Highway 1. This gives owners an opportunity to show that their cars can actually do what they were meant for. It also helps in case of ties in the scoring.