OVER THE COURSE OF MONTEREY CAR WEEK, thousands of unique and rarely-seen vehicles – from Ferraris and McLarens to Lamborghinis, Porsches and everything in between – are put on display for admirers, gearheads and potential buyers. The cars’ transitory displays, or “temporary showrooms” as Matthew Kyler of Kyler Engineering calls them, are often just as aesthetically pleasing and structurally impressive as the vehicles they house.
“A lot of folks get the impression that these are just like temporary tents,” Kyler says. “But they’re so much more than that.”
For about a decade, the team at Kyler Engineering has been designing and testing fleeting outdoor showrooms in a variety of landscapes. Kyler said their team will have numerous ephemeral showrooms during this year’s slate of Car Week events, with nearly 20 installations at The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering, along with the Porsche display in downtown Monterey’s Cooper Molera Adobe, and some located at private residences, where car companies give their more affluent longtime customers exclusive sneak peeks of their top models.
While the short-term displays vary in size and shape, Kyler says the installations created for the Mercedes-Benz and Lexus shows in Pebble Beach truly meet the definition of temporary showroom.
“Those structures are really large with glass all around them and they actually have enclosed space,” he points out. “They are really a sight to be seen.”
The firm did not design the larger temporary showrooms in Pebble Beach but does provide structural testing of the installations to ensure compliance and public safety for the events. In fact, the team at Kyler Engineering has designed a one-of-a-kind device to perform anchorage testing of installations.
“That’s because Quail doesn’t want big forklifts driving on their golf course, so we have a custom testing machine that we designed and built,” Kyler says.
The biggest challenge for his team, who often work on projects for months at a time, comes with designing and testing these installations in a tight timeframe.
“A lot of these companies are shipping out from Atlanta or Detroit or Utah, and they need us to get them the final design with enough time for them to build and ship it across the country,” Kyler says. “Everybody is behind the eight ball. Sometimes life happens and a piece may have broken during shipment.”
Having experienced a decade of Car Weeks, Kyler says that he and his team expect last-minute hiccups and adjust accordingly. “The part that’s fun about it is that we get to put our thinking caps on and come up with creative solutions,” he says. “And also make sure that everyone is staying safe. There is a lot of satisfaction that comes from that. That’s what structural engineering is at its core: helping people be safe.”
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