A 1957 Ferrari Race Car Wins The Quail, Where Diablos, F40s and Japanese GTs Shared the Grass

Monterey Car Week is full of shows where the cars are older than the people looking at them and the judging sheets care about original hose clamps. The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering, has always leaned a little faster than that, and its 2026 Best of Show made the point. On Aug. 14 at The Quail Golf Club, the top award went to a 1957 Ferrari 625/250 Testarossa owned by collector Bruce Meyer, a car that earned its reputation winning races, not lawn contests.

The 23rd edition of the event, now officially The Quail by The Peninsula, put more than 200 cars on the grass, according to Octane and Sports Car Digest. The special classes were an interesting mix for a show with this kind of ticket price: the centennial of Route 66, a 30-car celebration of the Lamborghini Diablo, the Ferrari F40, the legacy of Japanese GTs and a selection from Meyer's own collection.

A Customer Racer With 11 Wins in One Season

The winning Ferrari was commissioned by John von Neumann, the Southern California Ferrari distributor and racer who did as much as anyone to put the Prancing Horse on West Coast tracks in the 1950s. Bodied by Scaglietti, the car recorded 11 victories during the 1957 season, Octane reported. It was later fitted with a 3.0-liter Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa V12 and kept racing in privateer hands.

That history is what separates a car like this from a pristine show queen. The 625/250 is a document of how American sports car racing actually worked in the late fifties: a dealer-backed customer car, upgraded with whatever engine the factory would sell, raced weekend after weekend by people who expected to win. It fits The Quail, which has always weighted competition provenance heavily, and it fits Meyer, a Los Angeles collector known as much for hot rods as for Ferraris.

Sports Car Digest reported that the win put the car into the Rolex Circle of Champions, and that Meyer received an engraved Oyster Perpetual Datejust 36 presented by Rolex USA president and CEO Luca Bernasconi.

Diablos, F40s and Japanese GTs on the Lawn

The Bruce Meyer Collection class added a twist to the day. Meyer had a class of his own on the lawn, built around cars from his garage, and he also went home with Best of Show. For a collector whose name is tied as much to Southern California car culture as to any one marque, it was a fitting double.

For a younger crowd, the special classes were the real story. Thirty Lamborghini Diablos in one place is a reminder that the poster car of the early nineties is now a full-blown collectible, and the F40 class did the same for Ferrari's last analog hypercar. Both cars defined bedroom walls for a generation that now has the money to buy them, and both have become the kind of car a concours builds a class around.

The Japanese GT class is the bigger signal. Not long ago, Japanese cars at a Monterey show meant a token 2000GT. A dedicated class at The Quail, alongside Italian exotics and a Route 66 tribute, says the old guard has accepted that Skylines, Zs, Supras and their ancestors belong on the same grass as Ferraris. It also lines up neatly with what has been happening at shows like the Japanese Classic Car Show in Long Beach for two decades.

The Route 66 class tied The Quail to the highway's 100th birthday, a theme that ran through a lot of American car events in 2026, including Hot Rod's Power Tour, which followed the old highway in June.

The Awards Beyond Best of Show

Octane reported the rest of the major awards. The Spirit of The Quail went to Marc Davidian's 1965 Porsche 911, an early short-wheelbase car that would make any air-cooled fan stop walking. The Hagerty Drivers Foundation Award went to Richard Plavetich and Susan Denton's 1962 Lincoln Continental, and Magneto's Editor's Choice went to the Caretakers Collection's 1994 Lamborghini Diablo VT JOTA.

That spread of winners is worth noticing: a Ferrari race car, an early 911, a slab-sided Lincoln and a Diablo variant. With the JOTA taking Magneto's award, the 30-car Diablo turnout did not leave empty-handed either. The Quail does not pretend to be a hot rod show, but its awards rewarded driving history and enthusiasm as much as rarity.

The show also hosted more than 20 new-car debuts, including from Porsche, GMA and Spyker, and 2026 marked the first year Broad Arrow Auctions served as The Quail's official auction partner. Those debuts are increasingly why manufacturers treat Car Week as a launch platform rather than a nostalgia trip, and they put modern hardware a few yards from cars that raced in the Eisenhower years.

A race-winning Ferrari taking the top prize also says something about where collector taste is heading. The judges, like a lot of buyers this summer, rewarded history you can trace lap by lap over perfection you can only polish. For the Diablo and F40 owners on the same lawn, and for the Japanese GT crowd getting its own class, that is good news: cars that were driven and raced are being valued for exactly that.