Photography by Alex Sobran
After spending a few days in Monterey and occasionally catching glimpses of the permanent place beneath the temporary blanket of Car Week, I can’t recall any time I’ve seen a higher concentration of golf courses. The naturally scruffy hillside is frequently interrupted by the laser-cut chromatically green lawns of world class golf, and while their manicured presence stands in contrast to the sinewy seaside flora and the rather beige palette of this peninsula, they happen to pair nicely with the pretty cars that pose on them every once in a while.
The largest of these events in both size and hype is of course the concours held at Pebble Beach, but because the classic car ecosystem is so vast and because so much of it can be found in Monterey during this one extra-special row on the calendar of August, there are plenty of other fairways and hotel lawns hosting special automotive guests. And if you’re particularly swayed by the products from Munich, Stuttgart, Ingolstadt? The Legends of the Autobahn delivers on the promise embedded in its title, and then it removes the speed limit signs.
On the putting greens, abutting the sand traps, and leaning on the bluffs of rough last Friday was a group of vehicles that could serve as a nearly exhaustive field guide to the greatest creations to wear the rings of Audi, the star of Mercedes, or the roundel of BMW. Also present amongst these revered symbols was the the white lettering of AMG slapped to the back of a massive white wide body W126 Merc. Pretty bitchin’.
Some more rad things: an array of four 300SEL 6.3s fanned out behind the ship-like length of a 600 Grosser; a healthy serving of Recaro C-seats (especially concentrated near the impressive AMG display); the distinctive pinstriping of both early and later Alpina; the sand-casted and magnesium texture of early BBS Motorsport wheels; stacks of hi-fi and EQ equipment sunk into gleaming wood consoles; AMG Pentas shod in thick sidewalls; BMW Batmobiles; a G-Wagon that doesn’t park in front of Prada; and all kinds of other scenes for German car enthusiasts to digest and store to lasting memory.
There were simply too many worthy cars to shoot every one of them, so if you aren’t seeing yours or your friend’s in here please don’t take that as a slight (unless you are the owner of the yellow-spray-painted EVO II replica, in which case thank you for searing my eyes and brain!). Anyway, here’s what I liked in particular, selected from the big pile of goodness that makes this show a destination for those of us who’ve fallen under the persuasion of German engineering.
