The automotive cocktail party is slowly but surely replacing the traditional car show – and celebrating its 19th edition on Friday, ‘The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering’ still offers the blueprint for this successful formula. So it did not come as a surprise that many of the world’s most en vogue luxury car brands chose the Quail golf course on the Monterey peninsula to launch their latest limited-edition models. While Porsche presented the winged wonder that is the new 992 GT3 RS track weapon in a nostalgic white and green livery reminiscent of the Carrera RS 2.7, Bugatti bid farewell to the petrol-engined hypercar with a dramatic, limited-edition roadster, the Mistral.
McLaren went even more extreme with its Solut GT, a track-focused hypercar based on a virtual concept car first featured in the video game Gran Turismo Sport. 25 units of the 3.6 million USD carbon-fibre-and-titanium racer will be built. Meanwhile, Koenigsegg pulled the cover from the new, ultra-slick and highly desirable CC850 hypercar. And Ruf – a brand that has always had one foot in California – revived its trans-atlantic connection with the release of the Bergmeister, a lightweight Speedster prototype with open rear pipes that we would love to put through its pace on a Los Angeles canyon road. Still, the most Californian car at the show was the all-new and fully electric Meyers Manx 2.0.
But the Quail is not just a glamorous backdrop for major manufacturers to release their latest models, one can also spot some of the most interesting classics of the Monterey car week on the green: Besides the traditional concours classes the organizers put the spotlight on the 50th anniversary of the BMW M division, all things Mini Cooper – and 70 years of Jaguar and their wins at Le Mans. Considering the impressive line-up of British racing cats on the manicured lawn, it came as no surprise that a 1956 Jaguar D-type claimed the title ‘Best of Show’. The ‘Spirit of the Quail Award’ was won by a 1958 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Bertone Sprint Coupe.
Still, The Quail isn’t called ‘A motorsport gathering’ for nothing, so there were some serious motorsports machines on display as well. Representing 1980s and 1990s racing exuberance were a Marlboro-liveried Ferrari F40 GT, a Paris-Dakar-prepped Lamborghini LM002 and some signature F1 cars driven by racing heroes like Senna and Schumacher. Oh, and did we mention the Antarctica-racing Porsche 356 that we featured last Christmas?
On another note, our friends Andy Wüest and Morton Street Partner brought a fascinating one-off Monteverdi 375L once owned by Gunter Sachs to the party, while their gorgeous Citroën Squall - a BAT-style prototype not seen since the 1960 Geneva Motor Show - dazzled even the most knowledgeable car connoisseurs. The most fun car at this year’s gathering at the Quail? It must have been the Ghostbusters-themed Mini Countryman! Who you gonna call?
Follow us all weekend on Instagram and here in the magazine for our full coverage of the Monterey Car Week 2022.
Photos: Rémi Dargegen for Classic Driver © 2022
