The Quail: A Motorsports Gathering is expensive to attend, even as a spectator. It’s one of the few car shows in which many of the attendees can probably afford the extreme supercars on display within the gates. As a result, the parking lot is pretty much a car show in itself.
Here’s the coolest stuff I found on my stroll through it:
You know you’re not in a normal lot when a car as wild as a Lamborghini Aventador SVJ is dwarfed in nuttiness. All bets are off when you park next to a McLaren P1.
Here you can see how much bigger a modern 911 is than an old one—and how sweet a Singer looks in person.
This Nissan Pulsar caught my attention as a solid survivor. Check out the period-correct license plate, too! Seeing this really made me miss my Z31 300ZX. I wish I had time to go back to L.A. and pick it up on this trip. Oh well.
This Koenigsegg is wrapped, not painted, but its exterior coloring still helped vault it to the top of the most noticeable cars in this field.
Most people go their whole lives without seeing a Carrera GT. Seeing two in the same lot is, uh, pretty unusual.
Heck! It’s the little guy from the boomer memes on Facebook!
French cars new and old: a Bugatti Chiron is nice, I guess, but the perfection of this Citroën, inside and out, is not something I’m going to forget any time soon.
The McLaren MP4-12C is old now and has been handily outclassed by its successors, but I still think it’s a fantastic-looking supercar. It was almost enough to distract me from the vintage Ferrari parked next to it.
The 964 generation 911 is forever one of my faves. I guess that makes me a little basic, but whatever. Whaletail wing for the win.
Here’s another supercar-and-classic pairing, from Italy instead of France. What’s your style: Lancia or Pagani?
Yet another Singer 911 was hiding in the back. I’m almost positive I’ve seen this car on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.
I’ll always stop and stare when an early NSX shows up. I believe that’s Monaco Blue, though it actually looked quite a bit like Electron Blue Pearl from the EM1 Honda Civic in this lighting.
Finally a practical choice: the Ferrari station wagon. Sorry, I mean shooting brake. You can tell it’s a GT4Lusso, rather than an FF, from this angle because of the fender gill.
The Ferrari F40 is generally considered cooler than the later F50, but the 50 is the one I worshipped as a kid. Seeing two together in a parking lot was pretty mind-blowing.
I was surprised I only saw two safari-style Porsche 911s considering how popular these seem to be on Instagram.
This old Italian behind the Dakar tribute car is either a really good kit car or an extremely precious Ferrari 166. Those cars are so valuable that, even here, would somebody really just leave one parked under a tree?
Inside The Quail, I noticed that teal is very popular as an accent color, and this GT3 RS was clearly down with the trend, too. As for the old Benz, I think that paint might be a color called Blazberry ChromaLusion. Either that, or a damn fine wrap.
I was especially stoked to see this widebody Mercedes; it’s owned by the dude who resprayed my own Mitsubishi Montero down in LA. The blue one was pretty cool, too. I loved how the AMG emblem was stamped into the trunk.
This McLaren barely stood out in the crowd, except for the fact that it’s finished in a spectacularly bold green, gold, and yellow color combo.
Finally, we have the wackiest thing I found in the entire lot behind The Quail’s showgrounds. It’s a Porsche… or, at least, it was. We might have to look into whatever the Oil Stain Lab is up to and learn more about this thing.