A Bavarian banquet

This year’s edition of the Monterey Motorsports Reunion – which celebrates Laguna Seca’s rich sports car history – attracted the usual world-class selection of both historic cars, from almost every era and discipline, and racing legends to drive them. In its centenary year, BMW was appropriately the featured marque, descending on the Californian circuit with no fewer than 64 of its most important competition cars, including the 1999 12 Hours of Sebring-winning V12 LMR sports-prototype and all five IMSA-spec BMW 3.0 CSLs.

Healthy appetite

The record numbers of race-goers were treated to a mouth-watering selection of some 550 historic racing cars, all barrelling down the infamous ‘Corkscrew’, toe-to-toe with other priceless machines. The vastly populated grids ranged from pre-War sport-racing cars and early-1960s GTs, through to snarling Can-Am monsters (themselves celebrating the series’ 50th anniversary) and a demonstration of early-1980s Formula 1 cars. Classic Driver favourites included the gaggle of Ferrari 250 GTOs, the multitude of fire-breathing Porsche 935s, and Aston Martin DBR2/2, whose sage-green paint contrasted wonderfully with the circuit’s sandy backdrop. The appetite for classic cars and historic motorsport in America has clearly never been healthier. 

Photos: Drew Phillips for Classic Driver © 2016