Hagerty Launches The New Motorlux Event To Kick Off Monterey Car Week

Hagerty, the Traverse City-based automotive insurance company, specializing in special interest cars, has been on an event buying spree in recent years, including buying the McCall’s Motorworks Revival from Gordon and Molly McCall. Now officially badged as an “automotive lifestyle brand and specialty insurance provider”, Hagerty’s experience with premium vehicles and the people who own them suggests it knows how to cater to automotive enthusiasts. And this week’s inaugural Motorlux event, which kicked off the 2022 Monterey Car Week, confirms it.

McCall’s Motorworks Revival has always used the Monterey Jet Center venue to create an atmosphere of high-end automobiles, luxury aircraft and premium food. Hagerty has maintained that tradition for Motorlux, filling the pavement around the jet center’s hangers with four-wheeled icons and winged wonders, along with a sprinkling of gourmet food vendors serving up delicacies of every genre and flavor. Most of the special-interest cars on display at Motorlux came from the Broad Arrow Auction event, allowing participants an up-close look at unique vehicles set to sell the next day.

While we appreciate a vintage P51 Mustang (airplane) and local Monterey cuisine, we attended Motorlux for the cars, and we weren’t disappointed. It’s not often you see a Cadillac V-16 Roadster, Koenigsegg Regera and Ferrari F40 at the same show. But Motorlux offered all three, plus everything from a Ford GT to a Porsche Carrera GT to a Toyota 2000GT — with those last three parked within a 50-foot radius of each other.

Other timeless classics included an Aston Martin DB5, a BMW Z8, a Jaguar E-Type convertible and a Lamborghini Miura. The DB5 is of course famous as “James Bond’s Car”, but this one really was James Bond’s car, with a documented history of ownership by one Sir Sean Connery. The other three models could, and should, make any list of the Top 10 Most Beautiful Cars of All Time. Yes, the multiple desert vendors offered tasty treats, but the automotive eye candy was even more compelling.

As the first iteration of McCall’s Motorworks Revival, now called Motorlux, under Hagerty’s purview we can confirm the event is in good hands. This is good news because Hagerty now owns the Amelia Island Concours d’ Elegance, the California Mille and about a dozen other automotive lifestyle events. If the company can apply its understanding of, and appreciation for, automotive enthusiasts to every event it manages the annual car event calendar will look that much more compelling.