These Are The Best Cars From Monterey Car Week 2023

I don’t know what it is about this open-wheel mid-engine Corvette prototype that does it for me... that’s a lie. It’s the massive tires and grapefruit-sized exhaust. I think this is the 1959 CERV-1, but I’m not a dad and therefore can never be a Corvette expert.

Are you a very financially endowed person who, try as you might, cannot get an allocation for a Porsche GT3 RS? Well, Ford has a $300,000 answer for you in the form of the actually-kind-of-amazing Mustang GTD. This bad boy has cantilevered suspension, a rear transaxle, a big nasty V8 under the hood and more aero than you can easily shake a stick a

I don’t know about you, but I don’t typically associate early 1980s Lamborghinis with “safety” but clearly the folks running the 1981 Monaco Grand Prix thought differently because here we have a cocaine-white Countach safety car and it’s all the Countach I ever dreamed of.

If you’re not familiar with the gloriously unhinged Can-Am race series of the 1970s, allow me to educate you. It had essentially no rules, and saw some of the most bananas cars ever built pounding around North American race tracks. Eight-liter V8 engines were the norm and a few used these delightfully wonky uneven velocity stacks. Like this sinister black car from Shadow.

Normally I like race cars that are based on factory chassis, and am not as fond of silhouette cars which are just tube frames with vaguely production car-shaped bodies slapped on. I’ll make an exception for this gloriously battered and ear-splittingly loud IMSA GTO/GTU car. It’s a ripper.

The Porsche 935 is famous for being the last production-based car to win Le Mans outright and the fellas who campagined it were Bill and Don Whittington. These scoundrels snuck nitrous bottles into cars and eventually landed in prison. Before the gray bar hotel, they also campaigned this Road Atlanta liveried 935 prepped by Andial.

Out of all the pre-war coachbuilders, nobody did almost violently elegant sweeping coupes and convertibles quite as well as Figoni et Falaschi and of all their designs, this V12-powered Delahaye might be my favorite. I can’t imagine looking at this car and not feeling something profound.

If you asked me what Lotus was going to debut at The Quail this year, a hyper-limited road-lega Can-Am reproduction based on an unbuilt Colin Chapman design would not have been on my bingo card. Is it a good use of Lotus’ continuously precarious finances? Nope. Is it rad as hell? You bet your ass it is.

I mean, it’s not valuable or even that rare, but it’s hard not to love a crudely turbocharged air-cooled rear-engined Chevy, especially in this color.

Cadillac must be charging by the inch for this long lad because holy hell, it takes up a lot of space. Aside from that, it’s incredibly beautiful, the interior is exquisite and, frankly, I think it’s a spiritual successor to the Lamborghini Espada or Jenson Interceptor.

Big, nasty V8-powered muscle cars that are meant to do more than drag race? What’s not to love? This eye-searing Challenger with its deep, deep deeeeeeeep chin spoiler and mean-looking hood scoop really does it for me, and that’s without hearing it run down the straight at Laguna.

The Citroen DS was revolutionary when it came out in 1955, and the convertible version — bodied by Henri Chapron — is perhaps the most revolutionary DS there is. Of course, that’s only because they decided to call it the “Decapotable” which is very extremely French and makes me laugh every time I see it. Also this car is pretty AF.

Jag’s C-Type doesn’t get as much love as the D-Type race car that succeeded it, but it was the C-Type that introduced disc brakes to Le Mans and its the basis for one of the best stories to ever come out of that 24 hour race. Just look up Duncan Hamilton and hangover. This C-Type is special because it’s brand-spanking new and I’m ready to sell a kidney for a drive in it.

Believe it or not, I’ve seen way more CLK-GTR road cars than actual race cars. In fact, this is the only CLK-GTR racer I’ve seen and it doesn’t disappoint. It’s as big and long and low and wide as the road car but somehow even cooler. I wish I got to hear it run.

So remember a few slides ago when I talked about that Trans-Am Challenger? Yeah, that was dope, but this is even better. There were a handful of Mustangs in the class at Laguna, but it’s hard to argue with gold. They all sound epic downshifting for the first corner, and hearing it in person is an experience I’d very much recommend.

This car is both dumb and bad and I would imagine it’s also got the torsional rigidity of cooked spaghetti, but it’s weird and rare and this one was in awesome shape when I saw it at the Bring A Trailer lot at Laguna. This is Jalopnik, so we have to celebrate a god-tier shitbox when we find one, right?

This classic Bronco is kitted to the teeth with all the best stuff for mudding and desert running and I strongly suspect it would piss in the Wheaties of your skrajillion-dollar Bronco Samsquancheraptornator or whatever. This sounded awesome, looks stellar and if you were driving it anywhere, you’d be the coolest kid in that particular zip code.