That’s Rich: Crashing Monterey Car Week - InsideHook
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Leisure<br>> Autos
That’s Rich: Crashing Monterey Car Week
Seeing how the other half lives amidst the Lamborghini-loving set at Pebble Beach
By
James Jung
August 20, 2026 4:56 pm EDT
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Here’s the thing about Monterey Car Week: one doesn’t call the supercars on display supercars. They are exotics. Full stop. One must say this with an even balance of reverence and familiarity, along with a dab of lascivious interest.
Exotics, you whisper, purring the three syllables in dulcet tones to your fellow enthusiasts as you snap photos. You refer to the exotics by model. Revuelto. Tourbillon. Purosangue.
Exotics. The word serves as a lingua franca among the distressed designer jean community who may or may not have made their fortunes in crypto. Men who enjoy Italian leather. Carbon fiber. Scissor doors. Men who hail from Miami, Los Angeles, Dubai.
Exotics, they say, with trepidatious eye contact and a careful nod, like rendezvousing spies from rival countries spilling the code word that will allow them to work together. Or at least like grown men who have only previously interacted via subreddits.
Unfortunately, I did not learn the plural use of the word exotic until my penultimate night on the Monterey Peninsula — a hard-to-get-to spit of land I’d reached thanks to my hosts, the on-demand private airline Wheels Up. Getting to far-flung enclaves of the elite is their speciality.
As for my transportation on this particular night, it was a Bentley Bentayga, its 640-hp twin-turbo V8 growling as we zoomed along the type of coast that would’ve made Hitchcock swoon. A pair of private equity guys in town from Texas had been kind enough to give me a ride. We had just left an afterparty hosted by, you guessed it, Bentley. We were en route to the Inn at Spanish Bay, or more specifically the fire pits dotting its back patio, where many exotics enthusiasts congregate to close out each night.
A vintage Alpha Romeo parked on the 18th fairway at Pebble Beach.
James Jung
The two Texans spoke of double wishbones, torque vectoring, flat-plane cranks, wet-sump lubes, and I nodded and agreed and said “of course,” lest they spot me for the rube that I am. I resisted the ever-constant urge to ask how fast the cars in question go, which is the only supercar — excuse me, exotic — stat that I care about. When not discussing the aforementioned technical specs of each exotic, the two Texans discussed Supercar Blondie. At first, I mistook this for the name of yet another car model with a sexy silhouette. But alas, Supercar Blondie is an actual person, insofar as influencers can be actual people. The Texans lamented the fact that they’d been unable to meet Supercar Blondie at the Bentley party earlier that evening. They could hardly be faulted; after all, Supercar Blondie has 17 million Instagram followers. But when we lurched by her while pulling out past the Pebble Beach clubhouse — the nexus point of virtually all Monterey Car Week festivities — the Texans both quickly demurred, agreeing that now sadly wasn’t the time to roll down the window to say hi. Perhaps they’d spot her later at the fire pits.
Influencers were the name of the game all week. While there were bona fide celebs in attendance, from Michael B. Jordan to Adam Carolla to James Marsden to a rumored Richard Branson (who was said to be seen cutting the rug at the Bentley villa), it was social-media natives who drew the real crowds. A blinged out Justin Case had flown private from Miami. We spotted Daniel Mac — the original “what do you do for a living?” guy — at the virtually impenetrable Lamborghini villa, posing in a baggy Balenciaga fit for pictures with fans, all of whom seemed to be dads in attendance with (and attired exactly the same as) their children. Mac also interviewed Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann. The silvery 61-year-old proved another top draw all week, as did the world premiere of Lamborghini’s latest exotic: the Revuelto Super Veloce V12. The fully specced build will go for more than $1 million.
The Lamborghini Miura — widely considered the world’s first “exotic” — celebrated its 60th anniversary in Monterey.
James Jung
What started as a 13-car auto show 75 years ago is now big business. Ten days. Some 2,000 exotics. More than 100,000 attendees. A cool $130 million pumped into the local economy. A record-breaking $756 million spent at auctions. You get the picture. So do car brands. This year’s Monterey saw activations all week long, from new car launches to the RM Sotheby’s auction of Ferrari’s first production unit of their Luce, the Italian brand’s infamous, Jony Ive-designed EV. The highly criticized whip went for $40 million — the highest price ever fetched for an EV. While proceeds went to charity, many in attendance remained skeptical, believing the bidding to be...