Hot Damn, We’re Going To Devalue Pebble Beach By Just Being There

Imagine a Fabergé egg. Now, imagine yourself opening up that ornate egg, and inside, nestled within the delicate metalwork and cut crystal, sits a rusty bolt, wrapped in a rag that seems to have been used to soak up a combination of 10W-40 and what just may be urine. This is a close analogy for what is about to happen, at least for David Tracy and myself, when we show up at the most elegant and important car show in the Known Universe, the Pebble Beach Concurs D’Elegance. Our partner Beau Boeckmann will be going as well, but he, you know, fits. David and I, as longtime Garbage People, don’t, but we’re still going to have a blast.

I actually have been to Pebble Beach car week before, the first time a long time ago when I was still a civilian, and then again when I worked with Jalopnik, so I’ve witnessed the splendor firsthand, and have at least some vague idea what to expect.

David, though, hasn’t ever been to an event like this, being more used to impromptu car shows in Walmart parking lots, eating slices of the cheapest available pizza that’s been dropped onto the asphalt at least once. I’m hoping he feels incredibly awkward and uncomfortable in every situation he’s in while up there, making incredibly wealthy owners alarmed by offering to JB Weld priceless Voisin fenders or shoving his greasy fingers onto seats made of incredibly rare narwhal leather, just because that’ll be more fun to watch.

Really, though, I’m excited to go back to Pebble Beach because there’s just nothing quite like it, anywhere. Yes, the people that show their cars there are incredibly wealthy, but the truth is they’re also real gearheads and the cars you see at Pebble are not just status-flossing boring rich guy stuff: there’s genuinely, remarkably interesting cars there.

Here, watch their promo video:

Fascinating one-offs, proud and sad lone survivors of long-extinct marques, bold technical experiments, unhinged styling fever dreams, cars with stories and history and emotion and legend saturating them. It’s not about the money or the bonkers clothes or the status, if you’re doing it right. It’s just a dense, saturated dose of the highest quality raw, uncut Automobile, and I’ll do my best to show all of you what it’s like.

David and I will be seeing as much as we can, and doing our best to convey all the good stuff to you, all our Autopians who we wish we could have with us, but we’ll be your eyes. And ears, and, where applicable, noses. We’ll go to the Historics, where people flog century-old racecars around a track with ruthless abandon. I once saw a piston shoot out of the block of a 1912 Dusenberg. They’re not playing around.

Oh, I’m also going to be a judge for the Mopar category of the blood-thinningly exclusive Concurs D’Lemons, so we’ll make sure to show you that, too.

I don’t know yet exactly what’s going to happen, but I do know that we’re going, we’ll be driving into the whole thing something that Beau is not telling us about yet, and who the hell knows what else.

But you’ll be with us, and that’s what matters.