Carmel, 13th of August

Today the Monterey car week was officially kicked off by the first two events with lot more activities following the next days.

After the Monterey Motorsport Pre-Reunion last weekend on the nearby Laguna Seca racetrack and a day to take breath in an action packed week the first cars assembled at the Quail Lodge early in the morning to one of the few driving events of the week. As in the years before Sir Michael Kadoorie invited a small but selected group of friends to the Quail Lodge Resort for a tour through the surrounding countryside arriving on Wednesday evening at the Jet Centre Party of McCall’s. Amongst the three dozen cars taking the road that day some very rare machinery could be seen with a Ferrari 250 TR, two 250 GT SWB, the Bentley works Blower, an Aston Martin DB5 Convertible, a DB4 GT and even a DB4 GT Zagato. Certainly one of the favourites was the 212 Export (0092E) that won its class in Pebble Beach 2010 and was shown in several concours since. After taking the tour in the concours circuit that car is now back on the road and was already enjoyed at the Mille Miglia.

When the Rally left the grounds of the lodge the next event was the annual Concours on the Avenue, the only concours event during the week that is free to the public. After a rather weak year in 2012 this year’s concours attracted more good cars again with an interesting field of Porsche, Ferrari and American iron plus several exotics that could not be seen elsewhere in the following days. A small class of special coach build VW included no less than three of the very rare Rometsch Cabriolet and two Dannenhauer and Stauss (Coupé and Cabriolet).
Other cars of interest were a nice duo of Fiat (Abarth and 1100 TV). Directly from the racetrack a couple of Porsche 911 with race history and the some of the Trans AM entrants from the forthcoming Rolex Motorsport Reunion were escorted by the police to the city centre of Carmel to be lined up on the main street. Especially when the big American V8 came in the noise level was well above normal in the picturesque seaside town.
At the end of the day finally the Best of Show was named with the Ferrari 375 MM Pinin Farina Spider (0362AM) that was brought to Carmel by its long time owners Charles Betz and Fred Peters.

Tomorrow the auction previews will show many of the multimillion dollar cars to be auctioned on the various locations this weekend with RM, Gooding and Bonhams starting their preview on their usual spots.

Later in the afternoon the Corvette theme will be set up in Laguna Seca as this year’s feature before the day ends with the McCall Jet Centre Party.

Report & Images ... Peter Singhof ww.ClassicCarPhotography.de