Monterey Car Week wrapped up earlier this month, and it remains the best week in the car calendar. Nowhere else do you get The Quail, the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion at Laguna Seca and the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance inside a single week. It has also become the venue manufacturers save their biggest unveilings for, and 2026 delivered heavily. These are the eight that stood out, in alphabetical order.
One thread runs through the whole list, and it is worth spotting early. Four of these eight cars are road-going versions of race cars, and three of them make more power than the racers they came from. Not because the road cars are more advanced, but because racing regulations cap output and the road does not.
Aston Martin Valen
Aston Martin’s limited-series V cars have been on a remarkable run, from the one-off Victor in 2020 through the Valour in 2023 and the Valiant in 2024. The Valen is the wildest of them.
Power comes from the most potent version of Aston’s 5.2-litre twin-turbo V12 yet built, making 850PS (838bhp) and 1,000Nm, which the company claims makes this the most powerful front-engined car any manufacturer has put on sale. Top speed is 214mph and 0 to 60mph takes three seconds flat. The full carbon fibre body, magnesium wheels and carbon-ceramic brakes strip up to 110kg out of Aston’s existing V12 platform.
Here is the interesting bit for anyone who loved the Valour and Valiant: those cars were manuals, and the Valen is not. It runs the Vanquish’s eight-speed ZF automatic, though with shift strategies lifted from the Vantage GT4 race car. Some will read that as a loss. Aston’s engineers will tell you 1,000Nm and a manual gearbox is a difficult combination to make survive.
The body is genuinely new rather than a reskin, and the references reward a close look. Side skirts recall the track-only Vulcan, the rear treatment nods to the Valour, and the deleted rear window and integrated fixed wing give it a stance no Aston has had before. The show car wears Satin Andromeda Red, a colour-shifting Q Ultra paint using Chromaflair pigments.
All 150 cars were sold before the covers came off. Aston quotes pricing on application, but build slots have been reported at $2m and evo puts the UK figure at around £1.5m before options. First deliveries are scheduled for the second quarter of 2027.
Brabus Bodo Cabriolet
Brabus made its name on Mercedes platforms, the G63s and S-Classes and more recently some seriously quick Porsche 911 Turbos. The Bodo is a different proposition entirely: a full coachbuilding exercise, named for founder Bodo Buschmann, and now available with the roof removed.
Underneath is an Aston Martin Vanquish Volante, though you would struggle to identify it. Every exterior panel is pre-preg carbon fibre laid up at Brabus’s own facility in Bottrop. Aston’s 5.2-litre twin-turbo V12 is reworked to 1,000hp (986bhp) and 885lb ft, driving the rear wheels through the eight-speed automatic. Sixty arrives in three seconds and the limiter cuts in at 223mph, identical to the coupe. The rear spoiler deploys in stages and pivots vertical above 87mph to work as an air brake.
The profile is the reason to care. It reads as a descendant of the Vision Mercedes-Maybach 6 concept, all length and sweeping tail, and it is one of very few modern cars that looks better with the roof folded. The 77 motif runs through everything, a reference to Brabus’s founding in 1977: 77 cars, and a base price €77,000 above the coupe’s.
That base price is €1,077,000 before German VAT, roughly £920,000 at current rates, and every car is built to individual commission so the real figures will land well north of that. Production is limited to 77 Cabriolets.
Bugatti Destrier
The third car from Bugatti’s Programme Solitaire, following the Brouillard and the F.K.P. Hommage, and the premise is the best of the three. Take the Bolide, the most extreme thing Bugatti has ever built, and strip away every wing, vent and aerodynamic addendum until only the proportions are left.
What is left stands one metre tall, the lowest car Bugatti has ever made, on 20-inch front and 21-inch rear wheels that look enormous against a body pared back to bare volume. The Bolide’s carbon monocoque and complete powertrain carry over, which means the quad-turbo 8.0-litre W16 at 1,600PS (1,578bhp). Bugatti built its last W16 in July, so this is close to the end of that engine’s story, and the company buried the power figure in the final paragraph of its release. That tells you what the car is for.
The historical argument Bugatti makes is a good one. The Type 57 chassis produced both the 57G and 57C “Tank” racers that won Le Mans in 1937 and 1939 and the 57SC Atlantic, widely held to be the most beautiful car ever built. One platform, two entirely different expressions. The Destrier and the Bolide continue that, and the connection is made permanent by a hand-laser-engraved plate above the windscreen depicting both the Tank and the Atlantic.
The paint is Sapphire Celeste, a bespoke multi-layered blue with diamond-inspired sparkle worked into its structure, chosen partly because the celebrated “Pope” Atlantic originally wore blue before its current owner had it repainted black. Inside, Ambre Voyageur leather and nubuck sit alongside a 3D-knitted textile threaded with copper yarn.
Bugatti has not disclosed a price and will not. Earlier Solitaire commissions are understood to have changed hands well into eight figures, with estimates for this one sitting north of $20m.
Cadillac V-ONE Concept
Cadillac has quietly become one of motorsport’s serious players. There is a Formula 1 team now, and the V-Series.R has been racing in both the FIA World Endurance Championship and IMSA since 2023, taking the front row at Le Mans in 2025.
The V-ONE is what happens when a manufacturer with a competitive prototype starts wondering whether clients would buy one. It is a single-seat concept study developed jointly by Cadillac Design, Cadillac Racing and Dallara, sharing the race car’s proportions, aerodynamics, suspension, electronics and transmission hardware.
The powertrain is the part worth understanding properly. The V-Series.R runs a naturally aspirated 5.5-litre V8 with a Bosch hybrid system, and LMDh regulations cap the whole thing at around 671bhp. The V-ONE makes 830bhp. It is not a detuned race car; it is the same hardware with the regulatory handbrake released.
Ferrari got here first with the 499P Modificata, which follows exactly the same logic: freed from FIA and ACO limits, it makes 870cv against the race car’s regulated output. Those cars go to a small group of selected clients who run them at bespoke non-competitive events through the Sport Prototipi Clienti programme, which sits inside Ferrari’s Corse Clienti department. That is a proven model, and it is plainly the one Cadillac is measuring itself against.
The interior is where the customer intent shows: exposed carbon, a seat moulded to the individual driver, a steering wheel with a button layout designed for clients rather than professionals, a serialised door plaque and no infotainment whatsoever. Cadillac is careful to call it a concept study with no production commitment. Unveiling it at The Quail, in front of exactly the people who would write the cheques, suggests otherwise.
Gordon Murray S1
The T.50 was only revealed in 2020, and in the years since Gordon Murray’s team has built some of the most uncompromising cars in the world. The S1 LM that appeared at Monterey last year was the high point: five cars only, a modern reading of the 1995 McLaren F1 LM, and the first of them sold for over $20m at auction after being flown into the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
The S1 is that car made habitable. It shares the LM’s carbon monocoque and its three-seat layout with the central driving position, but every body panel except the roof and engine cover is new, the fixed rear wing and front splitter and side skirts are gone in favour of an integrated active rear aero system, and the suspension has been retuned for distance rather than lap times.
If the T.50 was the philosophical successor to the McLaren F1, the S1 is the visual one, and the resemblance is not accidental. Look at the headlight treatment, the bonnet scoop and the tail lamps and the lineage is hard to miss.
The Cosworth 4.2-litre naturally aspirated V12 carries over from the LM, revving to 12,100rpm for up to 690PS (681bhp), retuned to deliver maximum torque from 2,500rpm to suit the touring brief. It drives through a six-speed manual with a longer sixth gear as standard, and the engine bay is finished with a polished Inconel exhaust and 24-carat gold heat shielding.
That 681bhp figure looks modest next to the 1,000bhp-plus that has become normal, and that is entirely the point: the original F1 made 618bhp. Sixty-four cars will be built, all of them already commissioned, and Gordon Murray Special Vehicles has not disclosed pricing. Murray himself has admitted the 64-car run sits uncomfortably close to the 100 T.50s, and that he made an exception because this particular car is never going to happen again.
Lamborghini Revuelto SV
The Revuelto has been Lamborghini’s flagship since 2023, and as with every flagship Lamborghini before it, the wait has been for the harder version. It arrived at The Quail.
The extra performance does not come from the 6.5-litre V12, which is unchanged. It comes from the hybrid side: a 7.3kWh battery in place of the standard car’s 3.8kWh, no physically larger but considerably more energy dense, feeding three electric motors whose combined contribution rises sharply. Total output is 1,065CV (1,051bhp) with 1,425Nm, enough to see off the 1,036bhp Ferrari 849 Testarossa. Sixty-two arrives in 2.4 seconds and top speed exceeds 214mph.
Plenty of the rest is inherited from the few-off Fenomeno, including the integrated brake controller and the single-piece carbon bucket seats. New for the SV is a Pilota drive mode, worked through a rotary control on the steering wheel, giving a five-stage traction control system derived from Lamborghini’s GT3 programme that can be set for track conditions and tyre wear. Aerodynamics deliver 80 per cent more downforce than the standard Revuelto and 10 per cent more than the Aventador SVJ. It works: Marco Mapelli took it round the Hockenheimring in 1:41.6, which Lamborghini claims as the fastest production car lap ever recorded there.
On exclusivity, it is worth spelling something out. The SV badge has historically meant genuine scarcity. Aventador SV production ran to 600 coupes and 500 roadsters; the SVJ to 900 and 800. The Revuelto SV runs to 1,963 cars, a nod to Lamborghini’s founding year rather than a scarcity decision, and that is a materially different proposition. It is reserved for existing clients and collectors, and production is capped at two years rather than a fixed trickle.
A roadster looks unlikely given the Revuelto has never been offered as one. Autocar expects UK pricing above £500,000, with first cars arriving in early 2027.
Land Rover Defender Dakar
This one is my favourite story of the week. In January, Land Rover took three Defender D7X-Rs to the Dakar Rally for the first time and won the new Stock class outright. Rokas Baciuska and co-driver Oriol Vidal sealed it with a stage win on the final day. The three cars finished first, second and fourth, locked out the top three places on 10 of the 13 stages, and covered 24,000km between them across 14 days.
The Defender Dakar is the road-legal version, shown at The Quail as a design preview model. What makes it unusual is the direction the engineering runs. Almost every road-going tribute to a race car is the racer detuned and civilised. This is the opposite. The D7X-R was built on the same D7X architecture as the road-going OCTA, and rally-raid regulations restricted its 4.4-litre twin-turbo V8. Freed from those restrictions, the road car makes 635PS (626bhp) and 750Nm, which makes it more powerful than the car that actually won the rally.
The most telling change is one you cannot see. The OCTA’s 6D Dynamics air suspension is gone, replaced by coil springs working with motorsport-proven Bilstein Advanced Dampers, along with a wider track, increased ride height and uprated geometry. Air suspension is the more sophisticated system on paper and the one buyers at this price expect. Swapping it for coils is a decision made by people who have watched the hardware survive 24,000km of Saudi desert and decided not to argue with the result.
The rest of the hardware backs it up: 35-inch advanced all-terrain tyres on new forged 20-inch wheels, roof-mounted light pods, a carbon fibre bonnet, raised carbon intakes, a fixed metal roof, exposed rivets on the extended arches, rally mud flaps and an enhanced metal front undershield. New Dunes and Gravel drive modes join Flight Mode, developed for the race car to manage the landing when all four wheels leave the ground. Inside there is a 2+2 layout, optional four-point harnesses and dedicated mounting points in the back for racing helmets, a spare wheel and an air compressor. Buyers can have the D7X-R’s Dakar Sand and Yanbu Turquoise livery or a range of alternatives.
Land Rover has not announced volume or pricing, and full technical specifications will not land until the 2027 Dakar Rally in January. Registrations of interest are open now, with reservations from early 2027. For context, the OCTA it sits above starts at £147,245.
McLaren McL 6GT
If you already knew that McLaren’s first road car was not the F1 but the M6GT, this is the one for you.
Bruce McLaren wanted a road car built from the M6A Can-Am platform in the late 1960s. Only a handful were completed, he died in 1970, and the project was abandoned for reasons that had nothing to do with whether the car was any good. McLaren has been drawing on that story recently. At Goodwood in July, McLaren Special Operations showed the M6GT: Restored, a one-off ground-up recommission using a period-built M6A chassis, the original body moulds, a period-correct small-block Chevrolet V8 and roughly 3,000 hours of work. It was built for McLaren’s own collection and is not for sale at any price.
The McL 6GT is the modern interpretation, and it matters for one reason above all others: it has three pedals. This is the first McLaren with a manual gearbox since the F1 arrived in 1992. Six speeds, driving the rear wheels, paired with hydraulic steering and deliberately analogue controls, wrapped in a carbon monocoque with carbon body panels.
Worth correcting a common assumption: it is not a gated shifter. McLaren went with a design of its own instead, on the reasoning that neither the M6GT nor the F1 had a gate, so fitting one would have been theatre rather than heritage. The styling is a sharper break from current McLaren design language than anything in years, with a wedge profile, a kammback tail and a distinctly 1960s glasshouse. It will divide people.
What we do not have is numbers. No power figure, no displacement, no weight, no performance claims, no official price. Car and Driver reports around 500 cars at roughly $1.5m, which is the only guidance out there. What is confirmed is that this is not a design study destined for a warehouse: a production version is scheduled for 2028.
The thread worth pulling
If you already knew that McLaren’s first road car was not the F1 but the M6GT, this is the one for you.
Bruce McLaren wanted a road car built from the M6A Can-Am platform in the late 1960s. Only a handful were completed, he died in 1970, and the project was abandoned for reasons that had nothing to do with whether the car was any good. McLaren has been drawing on that story recently. At Goodwood in July, McLaren Special Operations showed the M6GT: Restored, a one-off ground-up recommission using a period-built M6A chassis, the original body moulds, a period-correct small-block Chevrolet V8 and roughly 3,000 hours of work. It was built for McLaren’s own collection and is not for sale at any price.
The McL 6GT is the modern interpretation, and it matters for one reason above all others: it has three pedals. This is the first McLaren with a manual gearbox since the F1 arrived in 1992. Six speeds, driving the rear wheels, paired with hydraulic steering and deliberately analogue controls, wrapped in a carbon monocoque with carbon body panels.
Worth correcting a common assumption: it is not a gated shifter. McLaren went with a design of its own instead, on the reasoning that neither the M6GT nor the F1 had a gate, so fitting one would have been theatre rather than heritage. The styling is a sharper break from current McLaren design language than anything in years, with a wedge profile, a kammback tail and a distinctly 1960s glasshouse. It will divide people.
What we do not have is numbers. No power figure, no displacement, no weight, no performance claims, no official price. Car and Driver reports around 500 cars at roughly $1.5m, which is the only guidance out there. What is confirmed is that this is not a design study destined for a warehouse: a production version is scheduled for 2028.
The thread worth pulling
Eight cars, and the pattern is hard to ignore. Two of them have manual gearboxes in an era that had written the manual off. Three are road cars that outgun the racers they descend from. One is a W16 with no aero at all, built for a single owner who will probably never register it.
For anyone who spends their time around specialist cars, that is an encouraging read on where the top of the market is going. The numbers are still climbing, but the things being sold alongside them are increasingly about involvement rather than output.
If you are looking for something with that kind of character in it, our team would be glad to talk through what we have in stock and what we can source. Take a look at our stock.
