Denton County Living Well Magazine January/February 2019 | Page 27

P
ebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is world-famous
for the quantity and quality of vehicles on display
each August on the 18th fairway of the golf course
and country club of the same name. For me, a first
time visitor, the sights, sounds and general ambi-
ance of everything taking place on the Monterey Peninsula
during my days there was, quite simply, sensory overload.
By the time my visit was over, it felt almost routine to drive
the peninsula and see one exotic car after another. I had
flown into San Jose on Tuesday of Car Week. An indication
of just how different these days were going to be happened
during the very first hours of my visit as I was driving along
Highway 1 from the airport toward Monterey, I passed a
1962 Aston Martin DB5. I had never before seen one un-
derway on the road.
First stop: the Embassy Suites hotel in Seaside to visit Auto-
mobilia Monterey. This event features vendors offering only
original vintage posters, photographs, rallye plates, as well
as badges and pins, mascots and hood ornaments, signs,
original art, desk and display pieces, scale models, litera-
ture and books, signed items, posters, stamps, post cards,
mosaics, unique scarves and ties.  No reproductions are
sold here. It’s billed as the largest automobilia show in Amer-
ica with over 45 international dealers in this single venue.
A pleasant surprise greeted me. Up to now I’d only “met”
Peter Bourassa on the pages of car publications, where Peter
had related about his long ago fast ride in a supercharged
four-speed Avanti. As publisher of Motorsports Marketing
Resources (MMR), Peter was set up in the Embassy Suites
ballroom promoting his online motorsports marketing web-
site and helping to introduce a new magazine about auto-
mobilia. So we got to meet and talk in person.
Then, on to the nearby WeatherTech Laguna Seca racetrack,
site of the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion during Car
Week. Practice and qualifying began on Thursday and Fri-
day and racing on the road course continuing through the
weekend. No Studebakers or Avantis at the race, but I did
run into Avanti owner and former AOAI board member Peter
Miller and his wife, Cameron. We watched the sport cars
wind their way through the cork screw while we visited.
Other venues I attended included a few of the many collector
car auctions: Gooding and Company; RM Sotheby’s; Me-
cum; or Bonhams’ Quail Lodge auction, to name just a few.
More sensory overload.
Friday of Car Week, after more auction car dreaming,
I was able to meet Renée Crist, curator of collections at Le-
May-America’s Car Museum. She and her husband and I
shared a pizza dinner in an Italian restaurant in neighboring
Pacific Grove where television personality and car guy Jay
Leno often dines when in town. No Jay sighting during our
evening there.
More auctions were on tap for Saturday–the day before
the Concours–although the big event for me was scoring
an invitation to the Automotive Fine Arts Society’s opening
See MONTEREY, page 26
Story and photos by Lewis Schucart
DENTON COUNTY Living Well Magazine | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019
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