by Wallace Wyss

The Quail, A Motor Sport Gathering, one of the premiere events of Monterey Car week, is really a unique event. You can’t say it is a concours because it is not so much a contest of which car is more beautiful or correctly restored as it is a gathering of interesting cars for the most cultivated connoisseurs to ponder.

In other words, at that entrance price (discussed later) it is not likely those ignorant of exotic cars will attend, it is more a gathering of the world’s best connoisseurs with cars that would interest them.

This is a curated show. What’s the difference? Well, Concours Italiano, if you own an Italian car, you can apply and get in. But at the Quail (named after the hotel it takes place at) is not so readily accessed. The curators have to look at your car and have to be convinced it is a significant car, tying in with their themes for the upcoming show. The themes change every year.

This year the themes were:

Rivalries of the Ages
100th Anniversary of BMW
Celebrating Motorcars and Motorcycles
A Retrospective of Laguna Seca Raceway
50th Anniversary of the Lamborghini Miura
Pre-War Sports and Racing
Post-War Sports
Post-War Racing
Supercars
The Great Ferraris
Sports and Racing Motorcycles

I went early in the morning and was impressed first with the ease of entrance and parking. You parked on a nice green golf course and then were shuttled over to the event a few hundred feet away. Behind you was the Bonhams auction, still within walking distance.

Once you entered the Quail you were bowled over by the restaurants. I saw at least three, maybe there was five. I filled up at the first one and couldn’t take any more food to explore the others. But no charge for the food, which makes you feel good until you remember the entrance ticket was North of $700. With all these chairs, it is a lot different from Pebble. Oh, there’s food at Pebble, but no place to sit.

And you don’t want to be seen at Pebble schlepping around chewing a hot dog. Here half the participants are eating or drinking and the other half touring the show.

The manufacturer’s displays are beautiful, raised platforms, often of wood painted white, that elevate and display the cars properly. Cars like Rolls Royce, and Bugatti, and McLaren. At each booth they have comfortable chairs and couches and don’t mind if you bring a drink from the last booth, or here, sir, we’ll refresh your drink here.

There was even an exhibit from a yacht maker.

As far as the section of cars, it was a wide variety. Each car is mentioned in the program, so you can identify what you are looking at. I would have to say the most impressive car to me was the 206SP Dino because there are so few of them. I enjoyed talking to the Doctor Mogadam, owner, who will be in my next book for his barn find of a gullwing Mercedes.

Now as far as “purity” of the display, I did notice some modern rebuilds going on, such as a ’34 Packard with a coachbuilt body designed and Rick Dore Kusstoms and with metal shaping by Marcels. So though it looked like a prewar Delahaye or Delage it was done in the last couple of years, the second coachbuilt car Dore has built for rocker James Hetfield.

Then too there was Gary Wales batcar or whatever you want to call it, a huge behemoth that was built on a fire truck chassis. We don’t know what has possessed ol’ Gary—who once restored Bentleys for concours. Now he’s off the deep end with these fantasy cars that look like Captain Nemo ordered them. But we luv’ ya Gary, you tell the world’s greatest car stories.

The Quail makes no national affiliation with any one country’s cars. They can have cars from Germany (special BMW displays) and even from America (surprise, Cadillac display).

Porsche purists must have looked askance at the Singer Porsches which seemed to me to be stock bodied Porsches that were fitted with upscale interiors and wheels and tires and performance mods. Outlaws but in a very classy way. Reportedly Singer has people standing in line for them, paying several hundred thousand per car.

One car that might be a preview of a coming trend was an old Ferrari 365 GTC four seater that was turned into a real hot rod restomod by Jim Busby, a former professional racer. It’s hard to say what class it would run in (is it old enough to enter vintage?) but damn he did that Ferrari right.

He admits restyling the body a tad here and there. Anyone who has seen it run is impressed. But in Ferrari circles originality was, like cleanliness, next to Godliness, now I look at Busby’s car launching more restomods which are essentially hot rodded customs.(Should we call them Kustoms if they are from California?)

The music was great and the setting (though no ocean view like Pebble), and the venue not so crowded that you had to wait a minute to shoot a picture of a car. You could tell the individual car owners were damn proud to be selected to enter The Quail, like I say, you can’t be in just because you want to be in, you have to be selected.

There was also a photography tent, featuring the books and photos of Michael Fuhrman, a photographer who takes stunning studio shots of classic cars.

The program book they give you is also stunning, very thick, with lots of color, something they would charge $45 for at a bookstore and full of articles by well known authors like Matt Stone.

All in all, if price is no object, this is the one event at Monterey that makes you feel like you are in exotic car heaven, with just enough comic relief (the Gary Wales custom fire truck, the Hetfield pseudo French classique) to make it not-so-serious. One gets the feeling that almost everyone there is the kinda guy you’d like to sit down with, each with a glass of cognac, and a good cigar, and talk cars.

Let us know what you think in the Comments.

Oh and one year about 4 years ago the publisher of My Car Quest won the Bizzarrini class at The Quail. He thinks it is the only Bizzarrini class at The Quail so far.

THE AUTHOR: Wallace Wyss says he is in search of a producer who knows cars so he can talk film rights to his novel Ferrari Hunters, a noir thriller set in the world of events like the Quail.