For decades, Monterey Car Week has been dominated by historic vehicles, flowing champagne and fashion. But a change is in the air: EVs, tech-centric vehicles, startups and a healthy dose of Silicon Valley's software developers and founders were part of this year's scenery.

Even Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance seemed younger, fresher, more vibrant-crowd to cars-an anomalous departure for this now-familiar closing Sunday show to the automobile week of wonders. The Concours d' Elegance, the ultimate destination for paginas and interwar vehicles, made an aggressive play by choosing, instead, to focus solely on Wedge-style cars from the 1950s up until 2023. One of those was a 1970 Lancia Stratos HF Zero Bertone Coupe belonging to Phillip Sarofim, founder and CEO of Trousdale Ventures and chairman of Meyers Manx - it even took top three finisher for best in show. The most ceremonial wins of honor went to a Bugatti Type 59 Sports made in 1934.

Heritage brands and a tiny number of startups were some of the forces mixed among wannabe social media influencers, young car fans, and a few celebrities which brought ripples to the pockets of the rich people who descended here to see some of the rarest and most costly vehicles on earth.

The crowds this year at the events were bigger and younger, most notably. Tech founders made their rounds at Hagerty's Motorlux on Wednesday night and Friday's The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering, drinking champagne, enjoying walls of bacon and limitless amounts of caviar on crackers, and even dancing the night away — a rarity at the events that are more likely to be punctuated by classical music than dance music.

It was obvious the younger crowds were all excited to touch and experience, not just admire," notes Rob Howard, founder of Kindred Motorworks based in the Bay Area. One other founder, a mid 40-year-old who wished to remain anonymous, "was shocked to be the oldest at the McLaren party."

And parties — there were plenty.

More than 4,100 attended Motorlux at the Monterey Jet Center, where those attendees spent an hour or more in traffic just to find a parking place. Over 5,000 were at The Quail on Friday. There were fewer unauthorized road rallies thanks to a very robust, and very visible, police presence in and around Monterey, Carmel, and Pebble Beach and far more excitement around electrification than there has been in the past. Howard also noticed that while EVs have been part of Monterey Car Week for a long time, they really seeped in a bit deeper this year. His startup, which unveiled a vintage (and now electric) Bronco at the Hagerty Motorlux event, was part of that trend.

Here's a quick roundup of the best things we saw at the annual auto-enthusiasts' bacchanal.

Acura Performance EV Concept

Acura, the luxury arm of Japanese brand Honda, unveiled its Performance EV Concept at The Quail on Friday.
Only a few concepts ever make it out of the model hall and on to mass production. It happens to be an up-and-coming model that will hit production next year and will be built in Honda's new EV hub in Ohio. The underpinnings of this coupe-uv (utility vehicle, as in) will be fully electric, courtesy of Honda. That is different from the current Acura ZDX (and the Honda Prologue), which sits on GM's Ultium platform. BMW M5 Touring

BMW unveiled an M5 wagon at Pebble Beach this year, which made many a heart of the automotive enthusiast sing, as it is actually the first time BMW has decided to sell an M longroof stateside.
The most interesting part is, of course, the powertrain that underpins the 717-hp sleeper: Both the new M5 sedan and the wagon get a plug-in hybrid powertrain loosely based on the one in the M8 hybrid race car.

Both the M5 sedan and M5 Touring (the wagon) get a 14.8 kW lithium-ion battery powering a 194-hp motor integrated into the eight-speed transmission and all married to a 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 engine. It will be years before it can be determined how many times an M5 driver will actually plug in to recharge. Everatti  Everatti takes shells of old cars, like a 1960s-era Mercedes-Benz 280 SL (known as the Pagoda), scans them, restores them and drops an EV-powertrain into them, while keeping the same ride quality, power and more.

A UK startup unveiled an electric right-hand-drive Land Rover IIA on the roads around the Lodge at Pebble Beach; we were lucky to take the car for a spin as well. Well done. The company's creation captures the flavor of the old Land Rover, makes it totally electric, and results in something rather nice. Everatti has created a Porsche 911 (969) RSR and the Pagoda, working with individual buyers to turn classics into EV-powered masterpieces.
Not cheap. Prices begin at around $225,000, and you either need to locate an available donor vehicle, or the company will be happy to assist you in doing so. And if you are a combustion purist, concerned about matching serial numbers, no worries here, as Everatti retains all of the original parts should you ever wish to return the vehicle back to its gas-burning self.

Hispano Suiza Carmen Sagrera

Hispano Suiza is not a name, but the 120-year-old Spanish coachworks builder unveiled its track-focused all-electric Carmen Sagrera, making a breathtaking 1,114 hp and 848 lb-ft of torque with a 103 kW battery pack at The Quail. The company has remained under the same ownership, the Suqué Mateu family, since 1904. Only 24 Sagreras will be built.

Karma Kaveya
Karma Automotive — not to be confused with the vehicle from the defunct automaker, Fisker — unveiled its Kaveya, a 1,000 horsepower electric vehicle Friday at The Quail.

The Karma Kaveya super coupe is the first car developed by the California maker after the company inked a deal with Intel Automotive.
While the outside boundaries of the "software-defined vehicle architecture" remains in flux, the inside is now "production ready." Both firms agree to "benchmark, demonstrate and validate critical concepts for the advancement of open standards for SDVA that can be shared openly and commercially to support the transformation of the broader automotive industry.".

There's a whiff of vaporware around the company, though we'll have to wait and see how things shake out.  Kindred Motorworks EV Bronco

Kindred Motorworks brought its first all-electric Bronco to the events in and around Pebble Beach, and Howard said it brought considerable attention to the four-year-old restomod company.

Kindred unveiled an EV restomod, a restored 1960s-era Bronco, powered by two motors and an 80kWh battery pack at Motorlux, and ferried attendees to the events at The Quail Lodge on Friday.
The first purely electric Kindred car is the Bronco EV, which will be shipped to customers
Lamborghini Temerario No Pebble event is complete without at least one conversation rudely interrupted by the roar of a Lamborghini. The company screamed onto the scene at The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering with its successor to the Huracán: a plug-in hybrid Lambo sports car called the Temerario.

Instead of that screaming V10 that we've all grown accustomed to, uh, the Temerario gets a V8 married to a very small 3.8 kW battery mounted down the middle of the car, keeping weight balance more even.

That battery powers three motors mounted front and rear.

Two mounted on the front axle give the Temerario the equivalent of an electric all-wheel drive system. The gearbox sits mounted, mid-body, between the engine and an eight-speed dual-clutch transmission, with the intention of additionally helping to manage torque across shifts. At 907 peak combined horsepower, the Temerario brings in what is, frankly a pretty sore topic: Lamborghini hasn't specified yet how much electric range the new vehicle will have, either. Still, it should be in line with the Revuelto. As most high-end automakers are doing, Lamborghini is sticking to its internal combustion engine heritage under pressure from the industry to electrify. RBW Roadster and GT

These two cars look like old MGs, but underneath, they are all EV. They get an estimated 150 miles of range from a small 35kw battery nestled into the frame and come complete with all the modern trimmings you could wish for: Bluetooth, Apple CarPlay, crash sensors, and air conditioning.

RBW is a U.K.-based start-up, and they've done lots of work behind the scenes to ensure these cute, mini, British-looking cars become road legal stateside and overseas.
The company only intends to build less than one hundred per year but will open a U.S.-based production location to help them scale.

Color schemes and interiors are entirely bespoke, and the Roadster is $139,0000, the GT is $151,000. Rimac Nevera R Croatia's startup that colluded with Bugatti set jaws agape during this year's The Quail gathering with the juice-up of their Nevera R: more powerful than the Nevera, the R version makes 2,107 horsepower, does zero to 60 in less than 2 seconds.

However, Rimac promised more will come later at Quail, teasing a "track-focused car that's faster than any other track car." The CEO shared with the gathering of people that "some work to do on the racetracks around the world before we show it here at Quail." The Nevera R will cost about $2.5 million, and only 40 units will be made. 
Porsche 993 Speedster

For a price, Porsche will work with you to design the car of your dreams, thanks to their Sonderwunsch (Special Request) division — and build vehicles such as this "Otto" yellow speedster, based on the underpinnings of a 993 Carrera RS, but mated with a 1994 Porsche 911 Cabriolet, and a 993 Turbo.

Trazzi is an aficionado of the Speedster and has a great collection of Porsches. "He was a member of that Sonderwunsch group, and did work so closely with them on the one-off project that he even got his own Porsche ID badge," Road & Track reported.