Laguna Seca Historic Races 2014 - part of Monterey Auto week

Its been a dream of mine since I was a child to visit Monterey California and see the Pebble Beach Concours - the most prestigious classic car show on the planet.  And last year, in 2014, I got the chance to go...

What I didn't realize was that the Pebble Beach Concours was just one part (albeit the grand finale) of an amazing entire week of car shows and car auctions.  In fact, there is so much going on that you don't even need to attend any of the events - just being in Monterey for this week allows you to see an endless plethora of amazing classic cars.  I would go out for walks just to see the cars parked on the street - DeTomaso Mangustas, Mercedes Benz 300SL gullwings, Lamborghini 350GTs, etc., etc., etc.! 

But as great as the Pebble Beach Concurs was, the highlight for me might have been the afternoon I spent at Laguna Seca raceway for the classic car races.  I saw cars I'd only dreamed about, or only seen modeled as Hot Wheels, suddenly in the metal right in front of me.  I saw a Ferrari 250 GTO, the most valuable post-war classic car, being raced with abandon on a racetrack...  It was a dream come true, so I thought I'd share some of my car photos with my readers.


I'll start off with some real-life Hot Wheels Redlines - Lola and Ford racecars that I'd only before ever seen in 1/64 models...

Next up, some really cool car car haulers...

 ...Porsche race cars from the '70s and '80s (with a cameo by my little girl). 

 My vision of a Porsche 935 was shaped by the matchbox version...  So I didn't realize how much of the back of the car really was a 911 with massive fender extensions...  

 I'm not sure I'd ever actually seen a Porsche 959 in the metal... 

At Laguna Seca, a Lamborghini Espada tooling around was "nothing special...".  Wow!

 A 250 GTO!?!  For real? 

 2 300SL Gullwings, casually parked and almost seeming to be a "paddock car"...  I couldn't imagine being in a place where 2 (TWO!) of these parked together wouldn't have had a crowd of admirers....  Check out the interiors!  



 

 

 An Iso Rivolta...  I later saw it raced through the corkscrew!  Nice interior!

 By comparison with the exotics, these '80s race versions of the Camaro, Mustang and Thunderbird at first didn't catch my attention...  Then I decided that they looked pretty cool anyway!

 Classic 2+2 Ferraris like this one were almost a dime a dozen... 
 A racing BMW M1...  Much nicer than my Matchbox versions!

I hope you enjoyed my photos.  Let me know if you want to see photos from the Concours itself, or from various of the car auctions!