Monterey Car Week 2025: 3 things to watch

Monterey Car Week, now bigger than any auto show in the world, is here once again. Last year, more than 100,000 attendees came to California for the 10-day show that started this year on Aug. 8 and culminates with the prestigious Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance car competition on Aug. 17.

Covering car week is a tough assignment, but someone at Yahoo Finance has to do it. The days (and nights) are jam-packed with classic car auctions, new car reveals, and a ton of automotive news and CEO talk.

So, with that said, here are the three biggest things to watch this week from California.

An auction rebound or further pain?An auction at Gooding & Company (now Gooding Christie's) at Pebble Beach, Calif.·Gooding & Company

Last year, the biggest auto auctioneers in the world — RM Sotheby's, Mecum, Bonhams, and the official auctioneer of Pebble Beach, Gooding Christie's — were expecting a big week, but the final tallies in the industry whiffed.

Classic car insurer Hagerty (HGTY), which also owns Broad Arrow Auctions, found that the auctions netted only $391.6 million, including post-auction sales. That was down 3% from the previous year and considerably below the $459 million estimate.

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That was before the presidential election, so uncertainty from that and global macroeconomic weakness likely put a damper on sales, especially those over $1 million.

This year, Hagerty doesn't see a rebound in the cards. "Our estimate for auction week totals is $388 million, with a range from $367 million to $409 million. That's right around what we saw last year and the year before," a company spokesperson said in a statement to Yahoo Finance.

It's not what the big auction houses want to hear. But interestingly, Hagerty's data shows there is a trend toward more modern supercars (1975-plus by model year), with those sales climbing. This resulted in the average model year for all auctions thus far in 2025 to hit 1974, up from 1971 in 2024 and 1964 in 2023.

The auction houses may start focusing on the modern classics since that's where the market is at the moment. But perusing the top four lots that are expected to pull in the most dollars at auction at Monterey this year, all are Ferraris (RACE) from the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, save for one from the '90s: the legendary F40 LM.

Read more: How to find the best luxury car insurance

Splashy concepts and supercars

It’s not just old, priceless autos that will be on display this week on Pebble Beach's 18th green. A number of luxury and exotic automakers leverage the publicity — and, of course, the high-net-worth buyers milling about Monterey — to unveil their latest and greatest creations.

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Among the highly anticipated are rumored concepts from Chevy's Corvette and GM (GM) stablemate Cadillac, which revealed Thursday morning its Elevated Velocity desert-inspired off-road concept, a year after it debuted the stunning Opulent Velocity. Chevrolet will also have the Corvette ZR1X Quail Silver on debut, which can be yours for a relatively pedestrian $207,395.Cadillac revealed its Elevated Velocity concept at Monterey Car Week.·Cadillac

Lamborghini (VWAGY) is expected to unveil an exclusive supercar, likely to be some kind of limited-edition model. Figure a price upwards of $1 million. Bugatti, the French supercar maker now run by Croatia's Rimac and Porsche (P911.DE), will also debut its stunning Brouillard, a "one of one" hypercar featuring a 16-cylinder engine and a possible $15 million price tag.

Japanese luxury brands Infiniti (NSANY) and Acura (HMC) will showcase some new cars as well, with Infiniti going the traditional route with an SUV debut and Acura taking the cover off a new crossover EV concept, resurrecting the RSX nameplate.The Bugatti Brouillard.·Bugatti

Even pure-play EV makers Lucid (LCID) and Rivian (RIVN) will get in the game with special editions of the Gravity and R1S SUVs, respectively, on display this week.

And smaller niche brands making "restomods" — a portmanteau of "restoration" and "modification" — will have cars on display costing upwards of $1 million. Interestingly, restomod brands like Gunther Werks, RUF, and Resvani all play in Porsche's sandbox, creating derivations of the 911 sports car.

CEOs and chatterFerrari CEO Benedetto Vigna (center) visits the Lamborghini stand at the Quail in 2023 — and crashes an interview with this reporter and Lamborghini's Stephan Winkelmann (left).·Pras Subramanian - Yahoo Finance

Go to enough of these events and you'll notice CEOs openly wandering their competitors' display stands to check out their wares. Top names are everywhere, shmoozing clients, pitching new strategic partners, and making deals.

Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann will be on hand to show off the company's new ultraexclusive creation, as will VW portfolio stablemate Bentley, with CEO Frank Walliser talking the British brand's newest concept, the EXP 15. And GM's Rory Harvey, who runs the automaker's global strategy across all markets, will talk up those Corvette and Cadillac concepts.Rolls-Royce Motor Cars CEO Chris Brownridge is seen at The Quail: A Motorsports Gathering on Aug. 16, 2024, in Carmel, Calif. (Matt Jelonek/Getty Images)·Matt Jelonek via Getty Images

Yahoo Finance will speak to all of them, including Infiniti Americas head Tiago Castro, live from the Quail event at 4:30 p.m. ET and streaming on Yahoo Finance.

Notable execs from Maserati (STLA), Rolls-Royce (BMW.DE), and McLaren will also be on the grounds, and we'll have the lowdown.

Pras Subramanian is the lead auto reporter for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on X and on Instagram.

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