My wife wanted to spend a month in California this summer (remote work FTW) and luckily for me she picked Pacific Grove during August. Things got even better when my new favorite forum member* GTwannaB offered me a free ticket to the Pebble Beach show. So I put on my birkenstocks, grabbed my potato-cam, and headed out early in the AM to see some of the cars getting setup.
The first car you see (after getting through security) is this. It's just laying on the grass with no real signage, but it's a prototype of Gordon Murry's T.50! It's smaller than I expected and the vast majority of people were just hustling on by. The car that is supposed to be the final word in ICE supercars just...kinda sitting there.
The thing about Monterey is that there are 3 different versions of a car that you'd otherwise only see once in your life. Oh dang, a Tablot Lago! They are so rare it's crazy to see one, blah, blah, blah-
Just kidding, here are half a dozen more.
I tried talking to this guy about his Ferrari but he seemed pretty busy getting it ready. There were some owners there prepping their own cars but I think many were being handled by the help.
Two gullwings and the original race version were at the Pebble Beach show, and a fourth at the German show that I didn't bother taking a pic of. This yellow over red example was probably my favorite-very original.
I was hanging around the yellow one trying to get a clear shot with the potato-cam and overheard three old guys who were chatting next to it. One finally leaned in, smiled, and said, "You know, I actually have one of these." The second guy was surprised and said, "Oh! I do too!" and the third guy said, "Oh E36 M3 guys, we all have Gullwings! What are the odds?"
Race version. Monterey is super cloudy!
This was a fully restored version that was in the mercedes tent, I think as an example of what their classic department can do.
Not what you think of as a gullwing, but still an amazing vehicle. I'd read about these in books but never seen one up close:
*sorry Stampie =(
