Gunther Werks Showcase
Monterey Car Week

Monterey Car Week moves fast, but the Gunther Werks Showcase at Folktale Winery lets the cars breathe. On August 16, 2025, I stepped from courtyard stone to vineyard rows and found the slant-nose F26 sharing attention with a GWX speedster. The setting is intimate—hills in the distance, vines acting as natural lanes—so I could work angles you rarely get elsewhere. Test drives kept the scene in motion, flat-six echoes rolling off stucco and glass, while late Carmel Valley light did its cinematic thing. It’s a smaller canvas than the week’s big shows, where moments matter more than spectacle—and small moves reshape the frame.

I planned for more time this year and let the setting dictate the rhythm. The gallery opens at the threshold with a black speedster greeting arrivals; cars shuffled for test drives until the orange Turbo press car took the entry. The black speedster migrated into the courtyard beside two Turbos, while a Gulf Blue speedster held the vineyard lane outside. As the crowd thinned, I slipped back out to find the F26 and the GWX speedster staged between the vines—quiet, deliberate, with the mountain lining the background. After a short loop down Carmel Valley Road and up Laurel Grade, I parked the orange Turbo among the rows—phone still in the holder—its interior already in track trim for Laguna Seca. The day here became a prologue to the following afternoon, when I’d ride with Patrick Long, and these images needed to carry that sense of focus and anticipation.

By golden hour, the winery turned into a studio. The F26 read longer and lower against the converging rows; across the aisle the speedster felt like its reflection in a different tense. I left the orange Turbo where my drive ended—staged honestly in track trim, its wing unapologetically functional. My own build will retain the subtler tail, but here, the big spoiler matches the mood. With guests gone, the only soundtrack was cooling metal and crickets. I packed up knowing the pictures carry what the day felt like: an intimate venue, moving pieces settling into place, and just enough solitude before Monterey’s pace returned.