Story by Brandes Elitch
Photos by Lon Price unless otherwise noted
The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering, was started by Gordon McCall way back in 2003. I have said before in these columns, and it bears repeating, there are two people responsible for creating this wonderful week in August in Monterey: Gordon, for this show and for the Jet Center show, and Steve Earle, for creating the Monterey Historic Automobile Race since 1974, as a way for his friends to exercise their old racecars at Laguna Seca. Every car enthusiast who comes to Monterey in August owes a debt of gratitude to these two men whose genius (and luck) created this ecosystem. Gordon is still in charge of entrant selection for this show.
The idea for the Quail Lodge show was, at the time, well, pretty revolutionary: situating the show at a luxury golf club and resort in Carmel Valley, away from the tourist meccas, with limited ingress, printing a limited number of tickets (a few thousand or so), and charging a ticket price significantly higher than any other similar event. The organizers have not disclosed how many tickets are printed, but the tickets are sold as a lottery, so you have to hit the bid to get a ticket. All tickets sell out on the first day, and I am told that the minimum bid is over a thousand dollars for the day.
Gordon’s idea was that the organizer would personally invite a small number of very unique and highly regarded cars to attend. But there was something else that was a bit of genius: providing the attendees with 5 luxury restaurants on site with complimentary gourmet food and drink, not to mention champagne, caviar, oysters, drinks, and dessert! Gordon had a similar idea with his Jet Center event and his Motorcycle show in May (which we covered here at VeloceToday at the time).
Gordon set the bar for what is now called “lifestyle events,” and yes, there are events now that have copied this idea, not just in the US but now in Europe too. One is the Amelia Island show, which “ranks high among luxury events.” There is a company called “Festivals of Speed,” which, according to their website, “hosts dozens of events through the U.S. Southeast with exclusive car shows held at some of the area’s finest resorts, shopping, and luxurious locations so you can “immerse yourself in the world of automotive luxury.” Wonder what the Goodwood Festival of Speed thinks of that?
Here are the themes for this year’s Quail show:
Featured Themes for 2024
• 100 Years of MG
• 50th Anniversary of the Porsche 911 Turbo Type 930
• 30th Anniversary of Koenigsegg Automotive
• Tribute to World Rally Cars
Traditional Classes
• Pre-War Sports & Racing
• Post-War Sports
• Post-War Racing
• The Evolution of the Supercar
• The Great Ferraris
• Custom Coachwork
• Sports and Racing Motorcycles
Something quite extraordinary has occurred very recently at The Quail. This year, The Quail became the worldwide epicenter for hypercar, performance, and luxury car releases, as well as restomods and customs. I suspect this will be the case going forward now. There were over twenty new releases, too many to recount here. Some were rather obscure, and some were from famous names in the present. Some were trading on famous names from the past, and some were one-offs.
Famous names in the past twenty years included Gordon Murray, Koenigsegg, and McLaren.
These unveilings were obviously planned for many months beforehand, and I suspect that this trend will occur next year too.
One that I thought was particularly impressive was the Cadillac CELESTIQ, which you can discover by visiting your Cadillac dealer, which I plan to do, although of course it is not in my budget.
My favorite, other than the Cadillac, probably not a surprise to our regular readers, was at the Maserati booth. I asked them to provide press photos for this column, and they kindly obliged.
Maserati GT2 Stradale is an ode to the most extraordinary and exclusive sportiness, the result of a technical and stylistic partnership between the Maserati GT2, a masterpiece of performance created for the brand’s return to GT competitions, and Maserati MC20, an iconic Trident car imbued with an unmistakable style.- Maserati PR
A particularly wonderful display was a tribute to World Rally Cars, which included a Peugeot 205 T16, Lancia S4, MG Metro 6 R4, Ford Fiesta Pikes Peak car, Ford Escort Mk 2 RS 2000, Ford Escort Cosworth, Lancia Abarth 037, Lancia Fulvia 1.3 Rallye, and another Lancia Abarth 037.
There are a total of eighteen awards to be given out at the show. This year, the Best of Show was a 1937 Delahaye Type 135, owned by Sam and Emily Mann. This is extraordinary, because the car was built as an open wheel race car and was later fitted with sports car coachwork built on the racer chassis!
Once again, this was a wonderful show and the organizers should be congratulated for all the work which went into it, which I am sure starts at least a year in advance. I do suspect that some of the attendees spent the day visiting the 5 restaurants and paying scant attention to the cars, but I could be wrong.
Below are a few of our favorites, as photographed by Lon Price.
1953 Siata 208S Vignale Coupe
1939 “Worlds Fair” Delahaye T165 V12, Peterson Museum
1938 Delahaye T-145 V12 Chapron Coupe
1959 Ferrari 250 California Spyder LWB
1970 Fiat Shellette on 850 chassis
1962 Lancia Flaminia Touring Convertible
1965 ASA 1000 GT Spider
That 1959 Ferrari 250 California Spyder LWB is the car…..
Thank you this overview. I would like to point out that your reference to Amelia Island was not correct. That event, started by Bill Warner pre-dates The Quail and other lifestyle events by at least five years. It is also a true concours. Yes, Gordon has done a remarkable job, but the recently retired Bill Warner was equally ahead of his time.
In about 1962 I saw that Chapron-bodied Delahaye 145 outside, behind the Henry Austin Clark museum on Long Island. It was in derelict condition. The windows were down, the disassembled engine was in the passenger compartment. I thought it needed to be rescued, the museum staff agreed and gave me the owner’s name–Bob Grier, a noted enthusiast and collector. I wrote him, pleading for a chance to buy it. He never replied. I couldn’t have raised the $2000 he might have asked for it anyway. A few years back I think it was in the Mullin collection. Did its present owner buy it at the auction?
Paul – The Delahaye 145 is one of 4 cars that Peter Mullin left to the Petersen Museum, the others being the Delahaye 165, Talbot Lago T150, and the Hispano Suiza Dubonnet Xenia. It’s comforting to know these four works of art will be available to be seen by future generations.
Many of the cars in the Mullin collection cannot be accounted for by either the Amelia Island or Mullin Museum auctions. I suspect that prior to his passing, Mr. Mullin made private arrangements for the sale of those cars. Hopefully, they will be shown again in public so we may all enjoy such wonderful works of art.
Brandy, not to take anything away from Gordon’s accomplishments, but clearly you weren’t there for the earliest events. As an entrant at the very first Quail (and about half of them since, and a multiple award winner too) I can tell you that it didn’t start out quite so upscale. At the first Quail we had box lunches. Really! Like a ham sandwich in a cardboard box, with a small salad in a plastic clamshell container. Mine had a bug crawling around in it. No champagne, no caviar, no fresh oysters, no gelato…. Well, you get the idea.
It’s come a long way, but those of us who bring historic cars are concerned about the possible trend towards emphasizing the hypercar debuts, with perhaps fewer and less interesting historic cars on display. It’s become almost impossible to access anywhere near the field area for a private entrant loading up a car after the event, due to the sheer magnitude of large transporters, and crews and forklifts and trucks tearing down corporate displays. One friend of mine who has routinely brought cars (at considerable expense) from Texas has stopped coming. I love going to Quail, but is the event now getting to be all about the revenue from the big sponsors, and the attendees who want to say they were there to see the latest megabuck offerings?