Grab your cameras—it’s time to go carspotting.

Erik Chalhoub here, remembering the time during the 2023 Car Week when I spotted a Lamborghini Espada in the parking lot of the Del Monte Shopping Center in Monterey. A driver in a Toyota Prius who had parked next to it asked me what it was.

I knew it was a Lamborghini from its badging, but beyond that, I had no clue. I suppose I could be forgiven, as I later found out there were only 1,200 or so of these made from the late 1960s into the ’70s. Besides, I was more excited about the European-market Volkswagen California van that was circulating the parking lot, something else I had never seen before.

Turns out, I was carspotting, although not intentionally. But that’s part of the allure of it.

Carspotting is similar to birdwatching, except with steel and plastic instead of animals. Birders keep a list of their “life birds,” or those birds they saw for the first time in a specific spot in the wild. The “wild,” in this carspotting case, can be your neighborhood street or a parking lot.

As Car Week kicks off with a car show on Alvarado Street in Monterey tonight, Aug. 8, carspotters will be out in force, cameras in hand.

To learn more about carspotting, I reached out to Doug DeMuro, the San Diego-based YouTuber with 5 million subscribers who runs the popular auto auction website Cars and Bids. DeMuro was once referred to on the internet as the “king of carspotting,” and his efforts were popularized in a 2009 article in Automobile magazine, which followed him as he drove around on the hunt to spot rare cars.

“The key is to have your head on a swivel and always be ready at any time,” DeMuro says. “You might be surprised where I've seen some of the most exciting and crazy cars, and you always have to be ready for them.” 

Upscale spots are always good places to spot a unique car—think outside high-end restaurants and valet parking spots, DeMuro recommends—but carspotting can happen essentially anywhere. (It might not be as fun at a dealership or car show, where unique cars are expected—the unexpected sightings is what drives carspotters.) DeMuro refers to the time 18 years ago when he spotted fashion designer Ralph Lauren driving his Bugatti Veyron near Telluride, Colorado by “pure chance.”

DeMuro says the carspotting hobby has exploded in popularity since the advent of social media, specifically Instagram, far from the days when he first started in 2005 with a “clunky digital camera” while driving around in a 1996 Volvo 850 Turbo sedan.

“I think it's so cool that we now have access to so many photos of amazing cars just being used at random times in various places,” he says. “To me, it's more exciting than seeing press photos and high-quality images that took hours to set up.”

Do you have any carspotting stories? Where do you like to go in Monterey County to spot some unexpected vehicles? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Also, send us your carspotting photos—I want to see what you capture in the wild during Car Week.