Monterey Car Week: The Ultimate Collector Gathering

For one week every August, a stretch of the California coast becomes the undisputed capital of the collector car world. Monterey Car Week draws the finest automobiles, the most serious collectors, and the highest sales of the year to the Monterey Peninsula, in a concentration of automotive wealth and history found nowhere else.

The Crown Jewel

At the center of it all is the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, held since 1950 on the eighteenth fairway of the famous golf course. It is widely regarded as the most prestigious car show in the world, and its top prize, Best of Show, is the highest honor a collector car can receive. Winning at Pebble Beach can transform the value and standing of an automobile overnight.

A Week of Events

The concours is only the finale. Across the week, the peninsula hosts the largest collector car auctions of the year, staged by houses such as RM Sotheby's, Gooding, and Bonhams, where the rarest cars change hands for tens of millions of dollars. There is The Quail, an exclusive motorsport gathering, the Pebble Beach Tour d'Elegance in which the show cars are driven on the open road, and a growing schedule of manufacturer debuts, where the marques choose Monterey to unveil their most exclusive new models.

Why It Matters

Monterey Car Week endures because it is where every part of the collector world meets at once. The historians, the auction houses, the designers, and the wealthiest enthusiasts all gather in one place, and the results, whether a record sale or a Best of Show, ripple through the market for the rest of the year. For anyone serious about collector cars, it is the one week that cannot be missed.