The wildest, most memorable cars of Monterey Car Week 2022 make lofty promises of speed, style, and a gasoline-free future.
Monterey Car Week is infamous for its supercars and super-rich attendees, and 2022’s event was no different with a cornucopia of exotics — and some unexpected wildcards for the rest of us. Though the concepts were free-flowing, as at any car show, the big ticket items at California’s most glamorous automotive event were the limited-edition models from marques like Bugatti, Bentley, and McLaren.
For those hypercars, the reality is that Monterey is a showcase debut, but not a sales showroom. Most of the high-end exclusives have long been allocated to the automakers’ most loyal clientele, a diminutive audience that has seen the early designs — and put down their credit card — long before the real vehicles are unveiled on stage.
For 2022, the big theme has been «goodbye gasoline» as supercar companies embrace the inevitability of electrification. Whether it’s Bugatti’s W16 engine or Bentley’s W12, the days of gas are numbered. That doesn’t mean there isn’t still time for some multi-million dollar last hurrahs, as the best of the old-school remind us why they’ve been so compelling all this time. Read on for some of the biggest launches of Monterey Car Week 2022.
Bugatti unexpectedly managed to capture both a first and a finale with the seductive, and wildly expensive, W16 Mistral. It’s the last production series car from the automaker that will use its vast, 16-cylinder gas engine, here in 1,600 PS form as so wildly applied in the Chiron Super Sport 300+ in 2019. Back then, it was speed that was the guiding star. This time around, it’s about actually seeing those stars above your head.
That’s because the W16 Mistral is the first car in the Chiron era to be a roadster, something we’ve not seen since the days of the Veyron. Bugatti says its customers had been crying out for an open-top option for years now, but it took this long to refine the design to keep the automaker’s distinctive styling cues, and not sacrifice either performance or safety. Ninety-nine lucky buyers will spend about $5 million apiece for the privilege.
Bentley is saying another big goodbye, in the shape of its now-iconic W12 12-cylinder engine. A mainstay of the British automaker’s line-up for decades, the arrival of Bentley’s ambitious electrification plan has meant a curtain call for this torque-rich gas power plant. It’s going out in the shape of the stunning Bentley Mulliner Batur, tuned to make it the most potent iteration of the W12 so far with more than 730 horsepower, and 737 pound-feet of torque.
Only 18 will be built, each priced from $2 million, and with the full creative expertise of Bentley’s Mulliner coach-building team to customize and craft a unique farewell to gasoline. That includes 3D-printed 18-karat gold, a waveform of the engine’s sound embedded in the dashboard, and a sustainable natural fiber composite alternative to carbon fiber. However, its styling previews some of the new aesthetic cues we can expect from upcoming vehicles, like Bentley’s first all-electric model in 2025.
