The Quail at Monterey, Courtesy Brandes Elitch

2 Million USD for a Lancia Aurelia at Quail’s Bonhams…a record?

The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering, 2015 edition

By Brandes Elitch
Photos by Hugues Vanhoolandt CLick to ENLARGE

Because many VeloceToday readers don’t live in California, let’s start with a brief overview of why the Carmel-Monterey area attracts so many people – about 7 million leisure visitors annually. Recently, Travel&Leisure magazine rated Carmel as the number three city in the world for romance, just behind Paris and Venice.

Carmel beat out Florence, Italy. It was founded as an artist’s retreat in the 1880’s, and has 100 art galleries today. The local newspaper, the Monterey Herald, estimates that last year about 85,000 visitors were here just for “Car Week,” typically held in mid-August. (No wonder I can never get a hotel room). This year, the auctions held during Car Week generated over $390 million in sales. According to some estimates, local sales tax generated for the week was $3.4 million. There were about 200 cars displayed at the Pebble Beach Concours, over a thousand at the Concorso Italiano, and about 250 at the Quail Lodge show, and of course these are not the only shows. To state the obvious, it is overwhelming.

The village of Carmel is only one square mile. There are no street lights, parking meters, or street addresses. Thus, there is no mail delivery, so residents must go to the Post Office. The weather is ideal – there are only 19 rain days a year (but a lot of fog in the mornings). It is adjacent to the Pebble Beach community, and you can access one of the gates to the Seventeen Mile Drive at the foot of Ocean Avenue, the main street in town.

A Quail highlight was this 340 Mexico Vignale, owned by Brian Ross, Ohio. This car finished 3rd in the 1952 Carrera Panamericana.

Just east of the village and only ten minutes away is Carmel Valley, where Quail Lodge is located, a surprisingly rural area, where vineyards, organic farming and horse ranching are big businesses. The average monthly temperature, year-round, is 71.6 degrees. Quail Lodge is a luxury resort, situated on 830 acres, with 75 guestrooms and 18 suites. The 18 hole golf course is maintained year round to tournament conditions. It was designed in 1963 by Robert Muir Graves. Graves designed over 75 courses all over the world, wrote books on golf course design, and taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. You could say that golf is a priority on the Monterey Peninsula, but the Lodge also caters to car people by offering the “Land Rover Experience” driving school year round to its guests.

Car Week didn’t start out as a whole week. Originally, it was just the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance and a road race in the area. Then Steve Earle brought the idea of historic car racing to the purpose built Laguna Seca racetrack in 1974. In 1985, Francis Mandarano started an Italian car show and it was held on the same field at Quail Lodge where the Gathering is held today. So many people came to race on the track (550 race cars this year) that the track had to open a week ahead (called the “pre-Historics”) and now the track is open the following week, for car clubs.

Thirteen years ago, Gordon McCall, along with Michael T. Lynch, Bruce Meyer, Chip Conner, David Sydorick and others organized the first Gathering at Quail Lodge. (Sir Michael Kadoorie, chairman of Hong Kong Shanghai Hotel Limited which owns The Quail, is an enthusiastic car collector). It would probably not be an exaggeration to say that The Quail is getting to be the most prestigious event during Car Week. You might think that this would be Pebble Beach, since they winnow the attendee list down from around 1000 applicants and people who restore a special car typically want to show it there first. But the Quail Lodge show is different. First, there are a very limited number of tickets, only a few thousand. The ticket price is $600, and the tickets are basically all sold out when they are released to the public. The other difference is that McCall comes up with different themes every year, and so my guess is that he has to reach out to the owners who can supply cars to fit the themes. I am sure that this effort takes an entire year in the planning. In this respect he is more like an impresario creating a new Broadway show every year, rather than just ranking applications. There is a big difference. I should also recognize that McCall supports a variety of local charities on the Monterey Peninsula. From driving around, you would think that there are no poor people living there, but of course there are, they are just not visible.

This year, the themes were Coachbuilt Ferraris, the Long Tail Cars of Le Mans, and Pre-1965 Porsche. This is in addition to classes for pre and postwar cars and motorcycles. Another feature is what they call a Fireside Chat, this year featuring Jochen Mass and Derek and Justin Bell. I would be remiss if I failed to mention the food, because there is gourmet food throughout the day and I would be lying if I said it was no big deal. It is a big deal. But you have to push yourself away from the table to see the cars, because if you are a serious collector, it will take you all day to do so. Even skipping over marques that do not interest me, I barely saw everything by 4 pm in the afternoon, seven hours after I started.

It would be a fool’s errand to try to mention all the spectacular cars in this show. Our VT photographer, Hugues Vanhoolant, came over from Belgium, and I believe he took over 5000 photos while he was here. He will share some of these with you on his posts. Here are ten special cars that I liked.

– 1929 Alfa Romeo 1750 SS Zagato Spyder owned by Sir Michael Kadoorie, the organizer of the event.
– The overall winner of the day, an 1968 Alfa type 33 Stradale
– A 1964 Alfa TZ 1, owned by David Eichenbaum. I will do a separate follow-up story on this car.
– A series of nine vintage Moto Guzzi bikes, owned by Mark Leonard (separate story to follow)
– 1952 Ferrari 212 Inter Vignale, owned by Anthony Best
– 1959 Ferrari 410 Superamerica, Series III, owned by John and Gwen McCaw
– 1984 Jaguar XJR 5 (yes, not an Italian car) but a spectacular one, as built by Bob Tullius for his Group 44 race team, and one of the most significant racecars of the period
– 1956 Alfa Romeo 1900 CSS 3-window coupe, owned by Paul Colony
– 1959 Ferrari 250 GT Pininfarina coupe, owned by Randall Cook. Cook has written a book on V-8 American engine Ferraris and I will do a feature on this later.
– 1950 Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 Super Sport cabriolet, owned by Peter Goodwin

At the end of the day, Bonhams was conducting an auction, right at the end of the road from the event. You could walk there. My friend Tony Nicosia sold his 1955 Lancia Aurelia B24S Spider America for almost two million dollars. Twenty years ago, I went to Italy with Tony looking for parts for his Lancias, and even then it was a struggle to find NOS parts. Tony did the entire restoration himself. People like him are the real heroes here.

For one day of the year, Gordon McCall and Sir Michael Kadoorie host a spectacular event. Next year, they plan something even more elevated: choosing six best of show winners from six of the world’s most prestigious concours, including Pebble Beach and Amelia Island. These cars will be so special that they would be in public or private museums and not normally on view. It should be something to see. As photographer Michael Furman puts it, these are “cars of significance,” as opposed to modern cars for sale. Just the fact that they are still with us is significant, and the people at this show are serious and sincere about what they are doing, memorializing the world’s best motorcars.

1929 Alfa Romeo 1750 SS Zagato Spyder owned by Sir Michael Kadoorie, the organizer of the event.

The overall winner of the day, an 1968 Alfa Type 33 Stradale.

A 1964 Alfa TZ 1, owned by David Eichenbaum.

A series of nine vintage Moto Guzzi bikes, owned by Mark Leonard.

1959 Ferrari 410 Superamerica, Series III, owned by John and Gwen McCaw.

1984 Jaguar XJR 5 (yes, not an Italian car) but a spectacular one, as built by Bob Tullius for his Group 44 race team, and one of the most significant racecars of the period.

1956 Alfa Romeo 1900 CSS 3-window coupe, owned by Paul Colony.

1959 Ferrari 250 GT Pininfarina coupe, owned by Randall Cook.

1950 Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 Super Sport cabriolet, owned by Peter Goodwin.