They've painted them in oil on canvas, buried them nose-first in the dirt alongside a highway, covered them with tiles, chopped them up, trimmed them down and customized them in every way imaginable, all in the name of art.
But for the purist, the most perfect form of car art is a pre-1950s vehicle restored to--sometimes preserved in--its original glory, displayed the way craftspeople at Bugatti, Rolls-Royce, Daimler-Benz (when there was one), Ford, Franklin, Ferrari and scores of other auto makers intended them to be seen.
The main event for these classic cars, the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, will be staged Sunday on the 18th fairway of the Pebble Beach Golf Links, capping a three-day extravaganza known to automotive aficionados as "The Weekend."
It is the 51st running of the Concours--that's French for a gathering or coming together--and the weekend is expected, as usual, to draw upward of 100,000 car buffs from around the world. (If you didn't reserve a hotel room or campground space months ago, a casual drive up for the weekend is not a good idea.)
The Concours remains the big attraction, with tickets sold only in advance at a cool $100 a person, thank you, with proceeds to benefit local charities. But the weekend also offers an automotive abundance that includes:
* Vintage car races at the famed Laguna Seca Raceway (recently renamed the Mazda Raceway at Laguna Seca in a multimillion-dollar corporate sponsorship deal).
* A quartet of car auctions, with everything from tarnished racing trophies to million-dollar classics on the block.
* The Concorso Italiano (that's Italian for concours), which takes place Friday in Carmel Valley just south of Monterey and is the largest annual gathering of Italian cars outside of a Roman traffic jam.
* Celebrations of Ford Motor Co.'s century in auto racing and the 100th anniversary of the Mercedes-Benz brand.
* The 40th anniversary of Phil Hill's 1961 Formula One world championship--the first such title captured by an American and a feat repeated by only one other American driver, Mario Andretti.
In addition, General Motors Corp.'s Cadillac division will use the Pebble Beach weekend for the unveiling of its new CTS--the replacement for the entry-level Catera and the first Caddy to use the sharp-edged "Art & Science" design theme launched with the Evoq concept car in 1999.
Irvine-based Meguiar's Inc., which makes auto waxes and polishes favored by many in the classic and collector car world, will be there celebrating its 100th birthday by sponsoring a new "preservation" class for unrestored pre-World War I vehicles.
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Judges in that class are looking for cars that have been preserved in original condition, with no new parts other than tires, hoses and other rubber components.
For Richard Nolind and the crew from the Nethercutt Collection auto museum in Sylmar, this year's Pebble Beach weekend started in January when Nolind's boss, car collector and museum benefactor J.B. Nethercutt, selected a 1911 Franklin limousine and a 1913 Mercedes-Benz touring phaeton as entries in a competition in which he has taken part since 1957--when the first car he restored won coveted "Best of Show" honors.
Nethercutt, who considers automobiles "functional fine art that is part of the history of the progress of America," has won six Best of Show trophies at Pebble, more than anyone else in the history of the event, whose contestants enter by invitation only.
This year he has placed the brass-trimmed Franklin in the preservation class and the rare, custom-bodied phaeton in the early Mercedes-Benz class.
The concept of a well-preserved car is fairly easy to understand, but a restoration is a difficult concept that can vary widely.
At Pebble, it has come to mean perfection, and Nethercutt, whose team produces some of the most renowned restorations of modern times, spends years and thousands of dollars researching the history of a vehicle before starting the laborious process of putting it back into the condition its maker intended.
A concours-perfect restoration means that everything, down to the nuts, screws and gaskets, must be identical in appearance to what was used in the original manufacture.
Restorers can--and do--use modern materials and techniques, but the end result must achieve antique-auto authenticity on the outside.
The Nethercutt Mercedes--now a gleaming construct of polished and painted metal, oiled leather and lacquered wood--was little more than a pile of parts in February as restorers at the private, nonprofit museum worked to re-create its skin by dissecting its skeleton.
The car, which the Nethercutt Collection had acquired in the early 1980s, was made in the fashion of its day: A steel chassis with engine and running gear was built by Mercedes-Benz in Germany and delivered to the coach builder of the customer's choice, in this case the French firm of Henri Labourdette. There, a wooden frame was constructed and a hand-formed steel skin fabricated and attached to it.
