The Pebble Beach Concours D'Elegance. The Dakar Rally. 24 Hours of LeMans (and its LeMons parody). I wouldn't call these events "household names," but they're staples of the gearhead calendar. So what are the greatest automotive events most of us don't know about?
A personal favorite of mine that should expand beyond local fame is the annual "Tutto Italiano" car show at Brookline, Massachusetts' Larz Anderson Auto Museum. Every summer the museum hosts "theme days" with a call to cars by country of origin. They host a British Car Day, German... down to even tighter niches that ought to be national holidays like "Miata Day" and "Waterbahn;" a gathering exclusively of water-cooled Audis and Volkswagens.
But the Italian event has long been the biggest and most beautiful. You'd never know so many classic Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Alfas, and Ducatis resided in the Boston area if you didn't come out for this spectacle. Even when it pours... the die-hards still put on a pretty amazing show.
So what other amazing lesser-known automotive events do we need to know about?
Contact the author at andrew@jalopnik.com.