MONTEREY: The Monterey Car Week (Aug 9-18) in Carmel, California, has changed big time.
The Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance started in 1950 so that California’s car enthusiasts could rub shoulders among rare classics one Sunday morning in August.
Seven decades later, the concours itself is now the finale of a weeklong automotive orgy of hypercar debuts, million-dollar restomods, vintage racing, concepts, auctions, rallies and oddities.
It’s kind of like the Olympics for car enthusiasts, but with less Snoop Dogg.
The biggest change since is that the term “Pebble Beach” used to connote a staid beauty contest for cars on a foggy peninsula; now it’s used colloquially to refer to the whole week.
For many, that means new-car debuts. (Traditional auto shows are dead.) Last year, electric vehicles dominated the headlines. This year internal combustion vehicles, including some with hybrid powertrains, are back.
To wit: Mercedes-Maybach introduced an opulent two-seat SL convertible with a V-8 under the hood. Lamborghini debuted a 900-plus-horsepower V-8 hybrid called Temerario, which revs to 10,000 rpm. Pagani revealed the Utopia Roadster, a 852-hp twin-turbo V-12 with a delightfully old-school manual gearbox. Maserati showed new variants of its V-6 MC20 sports car.
Meanwhile a new company called Nilu is trying to drum up business for a 1,070-horsepower, V-12 stick-shift hypercar of its own.
“Technology has not improved the automotive experience!” Sasha Selipanov declared at a preview of the car, which is called the Nilu27.
The company founder formerly worked for automakers including BMW and Koenigsegg; the Nilu27 is his manifesto against electric and computer technology taking over driving, he said.
But the behemoths were here, too.
BMW AG unveiled a touring version of its popular M5. Porsche AG showed a turbocharged anniversary edition of its best sports car called the 911 Turbo 50 Years (they’ll make 1,974 of them) and a one-off 993-generation 911 Speedster in yellow.
Lincoln trotted out a V-6 “spa on wheels,” as the company called it, the 2025 Lincoln Navigator SUV. Infiniti’s latest version of its flagship SUV, the V-6 QX80, is also here. Land Rover brought along a cadre of Defenders owned and operated by Queen Elizabeth.
All year we’ve heard that EVs aren’t quite as ready to take over the world as we thought.
Everyone from Ford Motor and General Motors toVolkswagen and Mercedes-Benz Group has reset expectations and targets due to lack of consumer demand for EVs.
If the hoopla in Monterey is any indication, new cars will be gulping gas for years to come.
