Hyper-rare Ferraris and priceless Porsches abound as I take one last stroll around the world’s classiest car park
California’s annual festival of expensive supercars, collectible classic sports cars and the super-wealthy owners of both – which has become known as Monterey Car Week, culminating in the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance – just took place at Monterey’s Pebble Beach golf resort.
The concours itself was won by a 1935 Duesenberg SSJ and show debuts were given to the Gordon Murray S1 supercar, the Defender Dakar, the Lamborghini Revuelto SV and the Ruf Ehra.
Now, it’s the day after the week before, in the car park of the Inn at Spanish Bay, a hotel right on the Pebble Beach golf course. Car Week is wrapping up. The show cars spent yesterday being wheeled off the links and loaded into trucks. But the show-goers are still around – and their cars are lending a disproportionate amount of visual interest to the hotel’s spacious car park.
In a half-full parking lot, I count 11 Ferraris; five Mercedes G-Classes; four V12-powered Mercedes-Maybach S680 limousines; an obligatory Porsche 911 GT3 Touring; a few eye-catching custom creations, to which we’ll come; and no fewer than seven Lamborghini Revuelto hybrid supercars all in one place (that’s around a full day’s production at Sant’Agata).
So Ferrari was well represented in our unofficial Pebble concours. Honourable mention goes to the bright blue Ferrari F355 Challenge car from Ferrari Silicon Valley, with its bright white Speedline five-spoke wheels, but also to the 849 Testarossa, in white with a red roof stripe, which gave us Miami Vice flashbacks. There were 12Cilindris and Purosangues too, and a rather nice 488 Pista.
No Pebble Beach hotel car park could be complete without some collectable old Porsches in it. Ours was a mid-1960s 356 SC convertible, in typically doted-on condition.
Among the more esoteric attractions was a black Mercedes W124 S-Class on whitewall tyres, which had been rechristened ‘900 SEL’ by its owner. There was also a very special-looking custom Porsche 993 Speedster creation, with a cut-down windscreen, which sadly I could only gawk at under plastic wrapping.
Among all of these exotics were so many hulking Lincoln Navigators, Ford Expeditions and Cadillac Escalades, of course – and a number of Lexus demonstrators, clearly still lingering after some customer event, that made us pine for the days when UK buyers could still enjoy the likes of the LC convertible and IS 350.
