A WEEKLONG WEEKEND IN PARADISE.(News)

The Monterey weekend, with its many complementary events, has transcended the hobby. It isn't merely a weekend filled with cars and car people: This is as much a lifestyle choice, a pilgrimage, a vacation destination, a happening, as it is a weeklong celebration of the car.

It didn't used to be that way. First on the scene was the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance more than 50 years ago, a come-on by a real estate developer to get San Francisco money to the fog-shrouded Monterey Peninsula. (If we knew then what we know now, who among us wouldn't have hocked everything for a few linear feet of that land?) Then, a couple of decades later, Steve Earle invited his friends with old race cars for a flog at Laguna Seca. This was when it was just a gathering of friends, and before corporations invested to woo car-guy consumers.

Eventually others came to the Northern California coastal party held every third weekend in August. The tours, parties, charity events, auctions, the other car shows and art exhibits-the Monterey Weekend remains the place to be. And with it has come a myriad of corporate brands-from Rolex watches to Citation Jets to Moet & Chandon and Louis Roederer champagnes to... ...