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By Eileen Falkenberg-Hull
Senior Editor, Autos, Travel and Lifestyle
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A new era of Monterey Car Week is solidly underway. What started as a car race through Del Monte Forest in post-World War II America has now evolved into multi-day celebration of the automotive industry from nearly every angle, including pop-up, influencer-centric gatherings.
The week of over 30 events has a $130 million annual economic impact for Monterey County, California, alone according to See Monterey, the area’s tourism arm.
Sixty-eight year old Gordon McCall has lived on the Monterey Peninsula his entire life. Car Week has been a part of his annual calendar since 1974 when he was asked to volunteer at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance while he was a student at Carmel High School.
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“A good friend of mine was in charge of the field operations. He is now chief judge there, Chris Bock, and I just I started there and I stayed there. I worked my way up to running the field. I became a judge there, 28 years in a row at the Concours, and I have nothing but respect for it,” McCall told Newsweek.
Throughout the years, McCall has been part of the Peninsula’s Car Week scene, creating two of its signature events, McCall’s Motorworks Revival and The Quail: A Motorsports Gathering.
“In the mid-to-late 90s, I had started more or less a social gathering at the Monterey Jet Center. I had clients of mine that were already in town, their aircraft owners, car owners. We were preparing cars. I had a restoration office, and so we were doing a lot of work for the cars that were coming to the peninsula. I started throwing a little party. Well, that little party turned into 3,000 people, and it became a thing,” McCall recalled.
That rights to the event were sold to Hagerty in 2021 and it is today known as Motorlux.
Twenty-three years ago, McCall observed that, “a lot of car owners at Pebble did not know how to start their cars; their handlers did… I've always viewed cars as kind of a pleasure in life, a fun part of our life. And when I started seeing that, and then a battle over the wristbands, whether or not you have right access, I thought, why don't we come up with an idea that includes where literally everyone there is a VIP?”
The Quail was born.
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McCall calls The Quail a “daytime version of what I was doing at night at the Jet Center.” He flipped the formula, putting the emphasis on the people rather than the cars. “I've always been a people person, and it's fun getting people together, and if you take all the cars away, you've got some of the most interesting people in the world that are into them there,” McCall said.
The Quail has evolved too. It now includes Eve on the Green, a Thursday evening event merging Michelin-starred cuisine crafted by the culinary team from L'Oiseau Blanc at The Peninsula Paris with a concert headlined by American country-pop singer and songwriter Russell Dickerson. The event will pay homage to the Route 66, which celebrates its 100thbirthday this year.
McCall’s Motorworks Revival and The Quail: A Motorsports Gathering attracted new audiences to the peninsula as part of the larger boom of events joining the annual calendar over the last three decades.
“Car Week has attracted basically a whole new audience, which tends to happen with successful enterprises,” McCall said. “I like to harken back to a line –I just love it—which is that no one's ever complained about too many rides at Disneyland. I just love that, and I equate it to Monterey Car Week.”
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Can the peninsula have its cake and eat it too? Or will the recent influx of influencers to the peninsula ruin the party?
“I know there's been a lot of conversation about a lot of the free events and a lot of the disrupting that took place last year and the year or two leading up to that - they weren't ticket holders of any event on the Monterey Peninsula. They were simply kind of here to disrupt and get clicks and likes and whatever,” McCall acknowledged.
Pop-up, unticketed events are organized, but often lack the formal structure of events like Motorlux, The Quail and the Concours.
“The organized events that have a have an entry fee. We all run under very strict rules and regulations. We contract with the California Highway Patrol. We have emergency evacuation plans. We have a food safety plan. It’s intense,” he said.
McCall continued: “To have free events pop up that are like willy nilly, I have mixed feelings about that. I don't want to see anybody excluded, but at the same time, when there's rules, I think we all need to follow them.”
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