Photography by Tim Scott
It’s a place you have to see to believe, but The Quail: A Motorsports Gathering has all the vintage, classic, and exotic metal you could hope to see in a lifetime—all parked, gleaming, sorted, and ready for enthusiasts to pore over. Here are the machines we couldn’t get enough of this year.
Held at the expansive and beautiful The Quail Lodge & Golf Course, it’s more like having several events in one; Bonhams holds an auction in conjunction with the show gathering, and the classes of vehicles on offer are each good enough to build a show on. This year, the 100th anniversary of BMW was a main attraction, with rivalries, stars of the Laguna Seca circuit, the Lamborghini Miura, and racing motorcycles also including seriously special machines.
Seeing BMW’s classic race cars actually moving was a definite highlight, as were both the hotly-contested Post-War Racing and The Great Ferraris classes. Of the Ferraris, the overall Best In Show award went to a 1953 Ferrari 375 MM Pinin Farina Spider…that had been sidelined for four decades because of a braking problem. Winning any prize at The Quail is special, but doubly so because awards are voted on by other owners who are showing their vehicles.
Which of The Quail machines would you have awarded with the show’s top honours?