Where image isn’t everything, it’s the only thing, or something like that.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

Monterey. The automotive related events that once comfortably encased a weekend in Monterey, California, have grown exponentially over the years to become a weeklong extravaganza of car shows, relentless auctions and more. And then there’s the racing out at Laguna Seca (a Mazda-sponsored raceway) thrown in for good measure too. It basically never ends.

This isn’t news, of course, as the week in Monterey is well documented as the place to be if you’re a car enthusiast, or fancy yourself to be. But make no mistake, any vestiges of genuine car enthusiasm – for the most part - have been swallowed-up by a withering push by manufacturers to connect with dealers, well-heeled customers and the media alike (even though no one is quite sure what defines “the media” anymore).

The week in Monterey has become a corporate schmooze-fest of the highest order, as the manufacturers have come to realize that the events leading up to and surrounding the Pebble Beach Concours d’ Elegance make up the most fertile hunting ground for customer mining and corporate image wrangling that a luxury automaker could ever hope for. I’m not even going to attempt to cover all of the manufacturers represented, because suffice to say, they were all there. I will, however, offer a few observations on some of the high- and low - lights.

Let’s take just one event, “The Quail,” often referred to as “A Motorsports Gathering,” although frankly I don’t know why they insist on calling it that. Yes, there were some racing cars there, classic and otherwise, including my favorite all-time car – the original ’59 Stingray racer - but The Quail long since blew past its rep as a charming gathering of some exquisite automobiles and racing machines to become what it is today: an outdoor auto show for luxury automakers, with food and booze. Yes, there are still some parts of The Quail that retain that bit of quaintness, but now it’s a full-blown corporate extravaganza of built-up displays and manufacturer test drives, complete with an upper-triple-digit admission fee.

This is big business, folks, pure and simple, all tidily presented in a bright shiny wrapper. On the one hand, The Quail is about a beautiful day, the manicured country club setting and some very cool cars. It’s all good. But on the other hand, there’s a feeling that it is all so orchestrated and pre-packaged that you just want to tell all the manufacturers to go somewhere else and take their displays with them and have it return to the quaint little show that it once was. This just in: That’s nevergonnahappen.

Jaguar was just one manufacturer offering attendees test drives of its new F-Type at The Quail. As a matter of fact it looked like Jaguar blew more than half of its marketing budget for the year in Monterey, as the F-Type was so ubiquitous in Monterey/Pebble Beach I thought they were renting them at a pop-up Hertz location in town somewhere.

Not that Jaguar was all that special in its ubiquity, as it wasn’t uncommon to see squadrons of Aston Martins, Bentleys, BMWs, Cadillacs, Corvettes, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Mercedes, Porsches, Rolls-Royces and the like cavorting around the peninsula in a display of manufacturer swinging-dick-ism that’s hard to miss.

Speaking of the whole “mine’s bigger than yours” thing, The Quail is only one show in a dizzying week of manufacturer image wrangling. The luxury manufacturers erect huge displays at Pebble Beach, with Mercedes-Benz particularly noteworthy – as always - with the decent-sized, big-city dealership showroom it constructs right on the Pebble Beach property, complete with every representative product it sells in this market on display. It’s pretty startling except that it isn’t, as grandiose displays have become standing operating procedure for manufacturers during the week surrounding “Pebble.” (The Porsche encampment on the Quail property was notable in its scope as well, but somewhat understated as compared to Mercedes.)

But then again, looks can be deceiving during the Monterey/Pebble Beach week. Just down from Mercedes was a display by Maserati that was puzzling, to say the least. If Jaguar ran through half of its marketing budget last week, it looked for all the world that Maserati consumed at least 90 percent of its marketing budget for the year at its display. Easily. But this wasn’t like the confident, act-like-you-belong-here display from Mercedes, oh no, this had the look and feel of pure desperation, a last-gasp attempt at jump-starting the brand.

It’s no secret that Maserati is flailing around for a toehold in this market, even though they’re clearly loathe to admit that fact (after all, they take their marching orders from The Great Sergio), so their display at Pebble Beach was designed to assuage its dealers enough so that they don’t bail and to attract the stray retail customer stumbling around the peninsula who hadn’t already attached themselves to a brand. But considering all of the other manufacturer firepower on display last week, those retail customers considering Maserati wouldn’t have filled one of the short shuttle buses that were in seemingly perpetual motion last week. In other words, Maserati is the quintessential definition of going nowhere in this market and there wasn’t a chance in hell that a fancy display at Pebble Beach was going to change that.

Lest you think that it was an all-imported show out there, there were three domestic nameplates in particular that made a splash in Monterey.

As I mentioned last week, Corvette, which is celebrating its 60^th Anniversary this year, was the featured marque at the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion at Laguna Seca. Chevrolet put on a tremendous display of its milestone Corvette production cars matched with their significant competition-prepared counterparts (see more coverage in “The Line” - WG) at the track, along with a variety of other Corvettes, which was gratifying to see. I was hoping that GM would do their star car justice and wouldn’t phone it in, as some manufacturers have done in the past and thankfully they didn't disappoint. They also had a brace of the new 2014 Corvette Stingray at the track and ever-present on the streets the entire weekend.

GM didn’t have to do much image-wrangling with the new Corvette as the new car does quite nicely on its own, but they did offer select test drives to potential customers. I spoke with one loyal reader of this site in the paddock at Laguna. A multiple Ferrari owner, he got to drive the new Corvette and came away completely impressed. This is the kind of personalized exposure that the manufacturers crave, and GM/Chevrolet seemed to make all the right moves last week with the new Corvette. 

Lincoln was another major player that tried to make an impression last week. We all know about Ford’s plan to rejuvenate Lincoln by now and the Pebble Beach/Monterey week was the brand’s opportunity to shine, as it was the featured marque at the Concours d’ Elegance. The company used the Pebble Beach setting to introduce its Black Label personalization program to the media. Black Label is an impressive foray into personalization that goes a step beyond to include an all-encompassing ownership experience. Even though the exact details of that ownership program are to be fleshed out, the concept design and presentation of Black Label was smartly executed and seemed to be enthusiastically received by the media.

One thing that was not well received by the media when it came to Lincoln was the fact that Lincoln did not unveil a concept at Pebble Beach. The overwhelming feeling was that as nice as Black Label is, it should have been presented one year from now, closer to when the program will be available to be ordered by consumers, and that this year should have been reserved for the unveiling of the future Lincoln design vision.

Opportunities like this are not to be missed by manufacturers, especially when juxtaposed against GM Design’s latest expression of Cadillac (see below). 

It’s clear that Lincoln finds itself between a rock and a hard place right now in trying to re-start its mojo, Pebble Beach or no. The strategy and design-centric aspects of the brand are all on-target and the MKZ shows much promise as to the future direction of the brand. But, Lincoln needs product, especially the new MKC and the replacement for the MKS. And they need it sooner, rather than later. Will Black Label provide enough sustenance for the brand until more new products come online? That remains the billion-dollar question. 

Lincoln would have been much better off at Pebble Beach if it weren’t for the fact that Cadillac wowed the multitudes with yet another future expression of Cadillac design vision. GM Design took center stage once again when it unveiled the Cadillac Elmiraj, an homage to the glorious 1967 Eldorado. A stunning, passionate piece of work, taut of line and purposeful in stance, the Elmiraj proves once again that when GM Design is on its game, there isn't another car company in the world that they have to play second fiddle to. A truly remarkable effort, it's reassuring to know that the True Believers at GM intend on making sure that Cadillac will remain at the forefront of global automotive design for many years to come, no matter what Akerson’s suits are up to. The Elmiraj is visionary design brilliance rendered magnificently, and it should remind all of us of what makes this business so compelling, and at times so very, very special.

(Images courtesy of Cadillac/GM Design)

That’s about it from Monterey/Pebble Beach, and I didn’t even cover ten percent of it. It’s all too much of everything and savoring bits and pieces of the week is really the best anyone can hope to do.

And let’s not forget the regular people, the Golden “ups” that the manufacturers stage their extravaganzas for. These are the consumers who actually paid retail for their exotica and even they had their own place in the sun during the week, as the parking lot at The Quail and every place else in the surrounding area indicated. (Although let me just say that seeing 30+ of the very latest new Ferraris parked together doesn’t do much for the brand. As a matter of fact it doesn’t say “exclusive club” at all, it just says that you’re just like everyone else, albeit at a much higher price point.)

Even in the more pedestrian confines of Monterey seeing a Ferrari F50 and a Ferrari Enzo parked nose-to-tail on the street was kind of ho-hum. And who would have thought that seeing numerous – and gorgeous – Mercedes 300SLs parked or driving around like so many Corollas could ever veer into the mundane? Then there was the guy with the white Ferrari F458 Italia, complete with black zebra-stripes. Or the candy-purple Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe, with white leather, of course. It never ends and you become numb to all of it somehow during car week in Monterey/Pebble Beach.

But before I go I should make a brief mention of the car auctions. A 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 N.A.R.T Spider was sold for a $27.5 million Friday night at RM Auctions in Monterey. It is one of the world’s rarest Ferraris, with only 10 ever built, and now it’s the most expensive road-going car of any kind and a new world record for a Ferrari sold at public auction. But $27.5 million? Really?

That seemed to cap the week off perfectly, providing a proper exclamation point to the whole thing. There seemed to be a lingering cloud hovering over the proceedings, as if commercialization of the week had finally reached its limit.

It felt like what started out as an optimistic celebration of cars as fine art had devolved to wretched excess and a perfect confluence of greed.

It all had an “End of Days”/"Last Days of Disco" feel to it. 

Will it stop? No, of course not.

It will be even bigger and much more grandiose next year.

And that’s the High-Octane Truth for this week.