With three months to go until Car Week, Carmel hashes out a plan for the crowds.

Pam Marino here, remembering the night Weekly staff writer Celia Jiménez and I spent in downtown Carmel during last year’s Car Week. I wanted to see for myself the spectacle that is Carmel as it becomes the focus of the car world after the sun goes down, primarily the last three nights before the Concours d’Elegance in Pebble Beach on the last Sunday.

The village has become a popular destination for exotic sportscars worth millions, plus classic autos, and the people who love them, in large part due to social media and the influencers with an enormous audience. That village character that residents love so much? It becomes its own allure, the perfect backdrop to show off expensive, sleek sports cars.

With each passing year, and as car culture continues to boom on social media, the crowds keep growing into the thousands, creating a real challenge. It prompted city officials to be proactive about planning for this year, which includes listening to residents and business owners.

There were multiple listening sessions, and out of those discussions, Carmel Police Chief Todd Trayer came up with two options for controlling the cruising sports cars and growing number of visitors. 

Back in March, Trayer suggested a pilot parking plan to the Carmel City Council, run by Good Roots—Nile Estep’s team that runs the Carmel Farmers Market on Thursdays—that would charge the people who want to park their exotics and classic cars on Ocean Avenue and surrounding side streets between $100-$200 per night, Thursday through Saturday, Aug. 13-15.

The proposal had some support from three of the five councilmembers who said they wanted to see more details and a contract. On Tuesday, May 5, Trayer brought the contract forward, as well as his own plan.

The contract with Good Roots included a payment to the city of over $21,000, while providing parking control as well as overflow parking at Larson Field (behind the Carmel Mission) and a shuttle. It was not popular among either car enthusiasts or residents. The enthusiasts decried the high parking fees, the residents feared it would become another large Car Week event in and of itself and intensify parking woes outside of the closed-off portion of downtown.

Trayer’s plan is an upgrade of last year’s enhanced measures to control the chaos. (From my viewpoint they worked well, but any plan can always improve.) The plan includes social media messaging alerting the public about what to expect, additional law enforcement officers from both Carmel PD and outside agencies, more temporary speed bumps and routing traffic through downtown in an efficient manner, among other initiatives.

Councilmember Bob Delves, who supported the Good Roots contract in March, said he had changed his mind.

“As much as I like the disruption of the Good Roots plan to turn lemons into lemonade, there are a lot of unknowns with it,” Delves said. 

The Council voted 5-0 to reject the contract and allow Trayer to move forward with his plan.

I checked in on some social media car influencers, and they are already hyping Car Week and encouraging people to visit Carmel to catch a glimpse of prized autos.

“Only 15 weeks until Monterey Car Week 2026, who’s going?” one influencer asked on April 22, with photo after photo of exotic sportscars parked in downtown Carmel from a previous year. Another influencer touting Car Week listed Carmel as the number-one spot to see exotics.

Only 13 weeks until Car Week, Carmel. Get ready.