Gunther Werks Dinner
Monterey Car Week

Gunther Werks’ Monterey Car Week dinner is a quiet counterpoint to the week’s spectacle—an invitation-only evening at Folktale Winery in Carmel. Two Speedsters, one at each end of the room, anchor the dining tables and set an unhurried cadence—rounds of conversation, tasting pours, familiar faces finding each other. The atmosphere is deliberate and small-scale: customers, a few regional dealers, and the core team trading notes. It’s aimed at connection and clarity rather than noise.

I leave the big camera behind and carry only my phone. Before the crowd filtered in from the courtyard, I slipped through the indoor display and captured a few quiet images—carbon catching the ambient glow, clean panel edges, the black Speedster reading calm and resolved at the far end of the room. At the center, a display of the double A-arm front suspension developed with Eisenlohr Racing served as a quiet conversation piece. The evening was social: owners compared notes, prospective clients found their footing, and Peter and Cecilia made time at every table. There were no reveals—those wait for The Quail—by design. The night stayed focused on craft and relationships, the kind of access that makes the rest of the week make sense.

This dinner has become a fixture for me because it keeps the scale human. It’s small, personal, and unhurried—enough space to ask questions and get answers. Folktale’s rooms slow the pace, allowing conversations to range from setup and service to colors, road trips, and why these cars matter to the people who drive them. Owners meet owners; new faces find their way into the circle; long projects get quiet check-ins. It isn’t a stage—it’s a conversation. That’s why it endures: the relationships stay at the center of Monterey Car Week, and the rest of the agenda falls into place.