Monterey Car Week: The Closest Thing to a Real Life Forza Festival

Here we are again!!! The highly anticipated auto enthusiast’s perfect week. Better known as Monterey Car Week.

For one week, the Monterey Peninsula basically gets taken over by petrol, rubber, and the burning desire to move fast, or as us speed fanatics like to call it, the need for speed.

And when I say every type of car imaginable shows up, I mean every type. You can go from seeing a one of one Ferrari that looks like it escaped from a private collection to a parking lot full of mass produced, soulless Teslas. Listen bud, you can modify that iPhone on wheels as much as you want. It is still a giant piece of tech.

Thankfully, there is a car flavor for everyone here.

American muscle? Absolutely.

JDM? Everywhere.

German luxury? Of course.

Supercars, hypercars, rally cars, drift cars, drag builds, classics, restomods, vintage race cars and things so rare you genuinely have to Google them after they drive past you? All here.

That is what makes Car Week so special. There are events specifically catered toward almost every category and subcategory of automotive culture imaginable. You have massive shows, smaller gatherings, auctions where cars trade hands for numbers that look like phone numbers, manufacturer showcases, photo shoots and parties that continue well into the night.

But somehow, my favorite part has always been what happens outside of the official events.

The entire Monterey area becomes a car spotter’s dream.

Cars that normally spend their lives hidden away in climate controlled private collections or museums suddenly roam freely through the streets. McLarens, Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Porsches become so commonplace that after a couple of days you almost stop turning your head when one drives by.

Almost.

Because then the real automotive royalty starts showing up.

I remember seeing a Pagani Huayra in person and simply being awestruck by its absolute beauty. The carbon fiber, the exposed mechanical pieces, the interior, it looked less like a car and more like somebody decided to build a piece of jewelry with an engine inside of it.

And somehow, shortly afterward, that was outshined by seeing a Bugatti Divo.

Then that was outshined by an Aston Martin Valhalla.

That is Monterey Car Week in a nutshell.

Every time you think you have seen the coolest car you are going to see that week, something completely ridiculous pulls around the corner five minutes later.

You might be grabbing coffee and there is a Ferrari F40 sitting outside. You might leave dinner and hear the unmistakable sound of something exotic screaming down the road. You might be standing at a gas station and suddenly realize the lineup waiting for pumps looks better than most organized car shows.

There is also something really cool about seeing completely different generations of car enthusiasts occupying the same space. One person might be obsessing over an untouched vintage Porsche while somebody twenty feet away is losing their mind over a heavily modified Skyline. Another person could not care less about either because they are waiting to see the newest hypercar.

Nobody has to agree on what the best car is.

We just agree that cars are awesome.

That is the culture.

Car Week feels like Forza entered the real world, with the important exception that everybody hopefully leaves the racing to the track.

Actually, it may be the closest thing we will ever get to a real life Forza Festival.

For a few days, the normal rules of what you expect to see driving down the street disappear. Million dollar cars sit in restaurant parking lots. Childhood poster cars suddenly exist ten feet in front of you. Cars you have only seen in YouTube videos are casually cruising beside you in traffic.

And then, almost as quickly as it begins, everyone packs up and Monterey goes back to normal.

Until next year.

For car enthusiasts, though, those few days are enough.

Welcome back to Car Week.