You will also be one of the few people there under 60. My dad goes to these events, enters his cars and he's begged me to meet him at a few. It's torture. Mostly ancient cars, people rubbing the mostly ugly old cars with diapers and a gajillion mummified gawkers who think that spry-youngin' McCain is a crazy, maverick amd Detroit built some of the best cars in the world - until the 1970s.

I'll take a track day at button willow instead, thanks. :)

I dunno, I could definitely go for the Laguna Seca event - I've always wanted to see one of those, and they show American-style muscle at its finest.

The others... I honestly couldn't care less about. I suppose they'd be interesting to watch (once), but I've never gotten excited about such cars or events like this. Guess I'm just not snobbish enough.

I always looked forward to this weekend when I lived in Northern CA. I loved walking around the pits at Laguna Seca, looking closely at such a variety of old race cars, especially after they had just come in from being raced and often had leaking oil or other minor problems being fixed. I recall watching Phil Hill and Juan Manuel Fangio racing priceless Alfa Romeo race cars straight from the Alfa museum wheel to wheel, passing in turns. It was fantastic.

Also, half the fun at the classic cars races was walking through the various car club parking areas to look at the Ferraris, Aston Martins, Cobras, and other cars people drove to the races.

Great car auctions to attend as well each evening. Lot's of alcohol being served and lots of bidding on all kinds of interesting cars. The Pebble Beach Concours was the least interesting event of the weekend from my point of view, especially when racing continued on Sunday at Laguna Seca.

blueguydotcom

Geez... talk about a lack of appreciation for some of the finest vehicles ever to grace this planet...

I would give my left twinkie to attend this event.

I love driving cars. But I just don't understand walking around and looking at cars. Or watching other people drive cars. One feels like a gentleman's club (look but don't touch) and the other feels like adult movies (someone doing something that's a lot more fun than sitting on my couch).

Bob, my dad passed on his love of cars. Sad to him, he did not pass on his appreciation for classics or restoration. I just wanna drive cars and drive 'em really hard. To his horror I don't care if all the parts are OEM or if the engine bay is so clean you could eat off V8. Authentic piping around the edge of some dowdy 1950's classic car's seats means as little to me as an original Pulsar NX sticker on the side of an 83 Nissan. Just fluff that doesn't make a car more fun or more comfortable to drive.

My dad's expressed concern to my mother that when he dies his classic cars are going straight to auction, regardless of the awards they've won and the time he's spent on them. He's also confided his hope that my unborn son will be interested in classic cars. To spite me, maybe the bugger will be. lol

Karl, I will choose Laguna Seca. At least I can see the real cars and people driving them. The Pebble Beach reminds me of the classic Hot Rod shows you see the same crowd and cars. Not for me. I pass.

blueguydotcom- couldn't agree more. I don't like old cars, some are pretty to look at but I don't really get it. I'm not knocking the hobby, but that wouldn't be my cup of tea. If all the cars were of this era and driven by professional drivers performing extreme stunts, sign me up.

What's the difference between a poser and a real car guy at these things? What do you do besides pose? (Surely not everyone is expected to take their cars out onto the track there?)

blueguy,

I liken your love of driving and disinterest in Monterey as being similar to playing lunchtime pickup basketball and not being interested in meeting Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, etc.

At the ripe old age of 58, I gotta admit I can understand where a lot of the naysayers are coming from. I started out with the Flood City Region AACA (Johnstown, PA) back in 1968 driving and showing a 1937 Buick Special 2-door sedan. Went from vintage cars to vintage motorcycles, lots of shows, lots of trophies in the following 35 years.

Back then, we restored them to factory original, not turned them into fugitives from American Graffiti. The trend from street original to street rod started the death of my interest.

I'm at the point that I can't be bothered to attend a vintage anything show. They're boring. Lots of cars restored to the point that no factory ever built them that well (it's a running joke at vintage British motorcycle shows that, "If they'd have built them that well originally, Honda would still be limited to making 50cc step-throughs"), trailered to the show, driven only from the trailer to the place in line, wiped down with cotton diapers, cotton swabs in the corners of the frame, God help a child in attendance if he gets a finger print on a fender, and then no end of grumbling once the trophies are handed out.

I can still remember the president of my chapter allowing his three and four year old daughters use the front fenders of his custom bodied by Packard 1930 phaeton as a sliding board during the show. And smiling all the while. Nowadays, you'd have documentable child abuse if that happened.

Oh, I'm still riding. My '69 Bonneville cafe racer comes out every month (at least - during the summer it's more like weekly), but take it to a field, park it and pose? No thank you.

7driver, okay. Why would you want to meet Caroll Shelby or Pininfarina (before last week) or Chris Bangle or any "legendary" or "infamous" carmaker/engineer/designer? Unless they're gonna put you on the payroll, what will be gained by meeting them?

blueguy,

I'm not that interested in meeting Bangle (except maybe to strangle him) or Shelby or Pinninfarina.

Fangio, Phil Hill, Parnelli Jones or Dan Gurney on the other hand...

I've got mixed feelings on this blog. I think it takes too much of a "you're either with us or against us!" stance on car-enthusiasm.

There are a lot of people interested in different aspects of cars, and just because someone wants to "[crawl] under" one doesn't make you any better then the rest.

I would say that if you have any sort of interest at all, you should be encouraged to come visit. It shouldn't be an elitist event.

Also, I may be showing my age here, but I have never been terribly interested in "Mustangs, Javelins, Camaros and 'Cudas". In my lifetime, race cars have never (or maybe extremely rarely) shared parts with road cars. That being said, I would love to see some of the older exotics.

I don't know how anyone can compare cars from different eras with cars of today. Different times. Different priorities. Different aesthetics. Different sensibilities. Different standards. I could go on...

What unites these vehicles—old and new—is "excellence" and/or "uniqueness." How one (a gearhead, no less) can't appreciate that is beyond me.

No, I wouldn't want to drive a '41 Buick Special (the first car I ever remember in our family) every day, but I'd love to have one in my garage as much as I would love to have had the long-term '90s-era Ferarri that Edmunds just got rid of.

"Monterey Weekend: Car-Guys Wanted, Posers Please Pass" should actually read something like
"Monterey Weekend: Crazy-Car-Nuts Wanted, Realists Please Pass"

As much as I like classic cars, I can see blueguydotcom's point of view. I seldom go out of my way to go to a classic car event. I'd rather drive my cars, old and new, than stand around for hours discussing whether the radiator hose on a 57 Bel Air is correct or not. Some people just get to absessed with that type of minutia. On the other hand, I love to drive cars from different eras and experience how different they can be. If I was blueguydotcom I would tell his dad "don't worry dad, I am not going to auction the collection off...I am going to drive the heck out of them till they acquire the correct patina!"

Seeing a Delahaye or Alfa 8c2900 at a concours is like seeing a Monet or Gaugin in a museum. Some guys "get it", others just hang a Carmen Electra bikini poster in their rumpus room. One group isn't necessarily less appreciative of beauty than the other.

Well, I don't know age of everyone posting here, but I'm 63. I suspect those of us with "some patina," (or is that melanoma?) might have a better appreciation for older vehicles—as we grew up with them, or at least some of them.

However even being a geezer, I still love my WRX, even thought I don't exactly "fit the age demographic." :)

I should probably specify what I mean by the term "poser" because there are many forms of car guy and, really, I don't mind any of them.

I'm more into driving and tinkering with cars (and motorcycles) than over-restoring and bubble wrapping them, but on some level I appreciate the bubble-wrappers, especially for older vehicles. To have at least a few pristine (if underutilized) examples of every worthy car from history is a good thing.

No, when I say poser I mean the people who show up in Monterey this weekend with ZERO car passion. They don't show up because they know/appreciate any aspect of the automobile, they show up because "it's the place to be" this weekend and they've got nothing better to do.

I didn't think about it as much a few years ago, but Monterey has gotten so crowded lately that when I think about the 10-20 percent of non-car-guys taking up road and parking and hotel and lawn space I get annoyed.

It was the same thing when the Ford GT came out and for every die-hard car guy wanting to get one there was at least one guy who saw the commercial during the Super Bowl, called his "handler" and proclaimed, "get me one of those vehicles, and don't bother me with details like price and availability."

You know if you asked these people (Pebble Beach visitors, Ford GT owners, or any of the other posers I'm taking about), "So what makes you want to do/own/attend this car-guy thing?" the answer wouldn't be "because I'm a over-the-top car enthusiast" it would be, "Because it's the thing for wealthy people to do/own/attend -- and because I can."

This cuts both ways, BTW. If, for example, I were to ever take up space at the Daytona 500 or Indianapolis 500 or Wimbledon it would be a similar travesty of someone wasting space at an event he doesn't genuinely care about. And if I were wealthy enough to attend these events at will I still wouldn't do it.

Like most of these pet peeves I bring up (paying professional athletes vastly more than teachers, having large swaths of the population buying far more vehicle than they need for daily driving duties, etc.), I'm not at all saying we need more laws to restrict or "correct" behavior (far too much of that already), but I can still note it and call it out.

Same here, I find (most) car shows boring. I'd rather attend a track day.
Regarding the topic of posers...if your work requires you to learn about a product does that make you an enthusiast? I think not. I believe an enthusiast enjoys their hobby devotes their free time because it's their passion. I hate posers...!