(Monterey, California) Passion remains the driving force behind Car Week, an extraordinary automotive event on American soil. Old or modern, authentic or replicas, creations or evocations, Formula 1, special bodies, unique models… there is something for everyone.
Posted at 11:45 a.m.
Since 1950, Monterey and surrounding areas have celebrated the automobile in all its forms. We admire beautiful bodywork, we let ourselves be lulled by the song of racing engines and we attend the spectacle of auction sales which regularly break records.
In Monterey last week, vintage car enthusiasts were at a loss for where to turn.
Car Week this year honored the centenary of the 24 Hours of Le Mans while celebrating, with pomp, major brands that have disappeared (Duesenberg, Talbot-Lago and other Hispano-Suiza). Apart from the plethora of builders, including young shoots, who came to present their recent creations (mostly electric), the old models that ran on new energies could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
PHOTO ÉRIC LEFRANÇOIS, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
To support purists in their transition to all-electric, Audi has produced a modern interpretation of its famous Ur-Quattro, the S1 e-tron quattro Hoonitron.
Kept away from the demonstration, the visitors did not all want to go to the end of the 18e hole to realize that alternative energies are more than a century old. In addition to the very experimental Chrysler Turbine (it could run on vegetable oil), there was the Columbia Mark XIX from 1907. Purely electric, this model produced by the Columbia Park Surrey consortium had “sufficient autonomy to go to the ‘opera’ and then cost $1900.
Wooden frames and canvas headgear or heavy shiny metallic cabins. On the multiple exhibition sites of the Car Week, several hundred cars huddle against each other. The youngest must be in her forties, but the motorization that drives the oldest is over 100 years old.
This event is not only a mecca for enthusiasts, even if it costs at least $515 to take part. This year, some 85,000 visitors came to relive the rich hours of the automobile.
More imposing, the cars of the inter-war period require long and complex restoration work. They were a hundred gathered on the lawn of the Pebble Beach golf course, including a Duesenberg J Figoni Sports Torpedo from 1932. It was she who won the top honors of this event. It looks brand new: it cost millions of dollars to get back into shape and required thousands of hours of sanding and fine-tuned hammer blows before it regained its full glory. Just as gleaming, a few red Ferraris irresistibly catch the eye, including a 410 Sport sold at auction for 22 million US dollars. Not far from there, the owner of an Alfa Romeo TZ Zagato assesses the value of his car. “Somewhere between 5 and 15 million,” he says.
PHOTO ÉRIC LEFRANÇOIS, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
One hundred and twelve copies of the Alfa Romeo TZ were produced between 1963 and 1967. Its rarity explains its value to collectors looking for exclusivity.
On track
Car Week is far from being a static event. On the contrary. The Laguna Seca circuit allows you to admire the legends of motorsport in motion. This year, a hall has been devoted to former glories of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. There were well-known models, such as the Porsche 917 and the Audi R8 LMP1, but also rarities such as the Cadillac Serie 61 (known as “the Monster”) or the Alpine A441C entrusted to Marie-Claude Beaumont and Lella Lombardi in 1975.
Formula 1 enthusiasts could touch and approach the Tyrrells, Shadows, Brabhams, Lotuses and the very Canadian Wolf (WR5) at their leisure. Among the owners of these cars, no more than a third are pilots. But all of them slip without being asked into the narrow cockpit of these single-seaters which they lovingly grease and polish.