It looks like Lotus might have a surprise in store for people attending next month’s Paris Motor Show. Word is spreading that in addition to the pair of Evoras we already know about, Lotus will also be unveiling two front-engine hybrid vehicles. Lotus has promised to offer more gasoline/electric sports cars, so we think this rumor is entirely believable. Edmunds’ Green Car Advisor thinks that one of the front-engine hybrids will be a four-door hatchback and the other will be a two-door coupe.

Lotus debuted its Evora 414E Hybrid (pictured) concept earlier this year, but unlike that mid-engine concept, the two front-engine models will only have engines on board as generators for the electric motors. Word has it they will use a 47-horsepower, 1.2-liter, three-cylinder engine specifically designed to provide power to electric-drive hybrids. More details to follow during the Paris show later this month.

Arrived Wednesday around noon and headed straight to the Jet Center to get my credentials. Another year of Classic Car Week in Monterey was about to begin. It’s the single most impressive gathering of collector cars in the world – a series of events that stretches from Wednesday night’s McCall’s Motorworks Revival to Sunday’s crowning of Best of Show at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, the most prestigious concours around. In between there are dozens of unveilings, parties, races, auctions and other concours.

There are actually events stretching back several days and ending well after Pebble, but the primary events are McCalls, the Pebble Beach Tour d’Elegance, Concorso Italiano, The Quail - A Motorsports Gathering, Concours d’LeMons, Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion and Pebble. I made it out to all but LeMons this year and snapped about 5,000 photos and a few videos to chronicle it all. It’s taken an extra week, but those photos have been separated into event-specific galleries and I even added a Highlights album for those of you who don’t necessarily have hundreds of hours to peruse the entire collection. Here are the links to get you to where you want to go:

McCall’s Motorworks Revival
Pebble Beach Tour d’Elegance
Gooding Preview and McLaren MP4-12C debut
Concorso Italiano
The Quail – A Motorsports Gathering
Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion
Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance
Random Awesomeness from Monterey
Highlight Gallery from Monterey 2010

McCall’s was its usual incredible self with the hoity toity shopping for new jets all while being wined and dined by some of the best restaurants and caterers in California. Oh, and there were some cars there too. Many of the other events during the week give McCall’s a sneak preview by bringing cars to the Jet Center for the party. Lotus showed off its new Exos T125 open wheel car for customers as well as the GT4 Cup edition of the new Evora. Heck, I even got to meet Lotus driver Takuma Sato.

The Tour on Thursday morning is always a special event as well. It’s our first look at the cars that will be competing in the Pebble Beach Concours on Sunday and the views of the cars whistling along 17-Mile Drive and PCH are spectacular. Seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling and sometimes event tasting the cars thundering by is like no other experience in your life. Well, the races at Laguna Seca come close, but these are road cars on some of the most scenic roads in the world.

Concorso and Quail on Friday are like Abbott and Costello. Concorso is for the car clubs and those who like to see quantity, while Quail is for the select few who prefer quality above all else. Both have their charms, but seeing a line of 200 Ferraris at Concorso is always amazing, as is watching a whole class of cars from the track come driving into and out of Quail for lunch. It makes for a long day, but both should be on your bucket list.

We usually devote Saturday to the track, and this year was no exception. It’s hard to explain it, but unless you’ve been to a vintage car race, you might not understand how awesome it really is. Imagine your favorite race cars from virtually any era – Cobras, Mustangs, Porsches, Ferraris, Bugattis, whatever. Now imagine a field full of them…check that, imagine 19 classes filled with 30-40 of them in each grouping. Now imagine that that Cobra is the ultra-rare Cobra Daytona Coupe and that the Porsche is a 917K. Yep, that’s the RMMR. Only Goodwood comes close to this type of gathering, and even that classic British event can’t match the appeal of Laguna Seca and its iconic Corckscrew.

Sunday means Pebble and the close of the week. We generally get up at 4 am to get to the 18th green by 5 so we can be a part of Haggerty’s Dawn Patrol. They hand out coffee and donuts and hats to those insane enough to get there early enough to watch as the contestants arrive and take their position on the fairway at the Links. Featured marks fill about half of the field and there are often dozens of cars that are display-only, but that still leaves about 75 cars that are being seen for the first time at Pebble or anywhere else most likely. It’s extremely exclusive and many of the cars are being shown for the first time after undergoing multi-year restorations.

We try to figure which cars might have the best shot at Best of Show so we can be sure to have some extra shots of them, but this year was a bit of a surprise, the honors went to a 1933 Delage D8S that was stunning, but a bit too monochromatic for our tastes. Still, the judges know a lot more about these matters than we do and the car is definitely beautiful and deserving. To be honest, we spent more time perusing the Ferrari SWB class and the Jaguar XK-SS class this year. Of the 16 Jags to leave the factory, twelve were here on Sunday. For someone who likes this car, seeing one is a lifelong memory. Seeing more than one in the same place at the same time is almost unheard of. Seeing a dozen of them together – as the commercial says, “Priceless.”

Scattered throughout the week were some pretty significant debuts as well, including the new McLaren sports car, the new Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, Boss 302 Mustang, the aforementioned Loti, the Ferrari 599 GTO, and the Porsche 918 Spyder hybrid to name a few of the better ones. We skipped the auctions for the most part this year but apparently not everyone did. There were dozens of records set as some amazing vehicles crossed the blocks at Gooding, RM, Russo & Steele, Bonhams and Mecum this year. Well, enough talk, let’s get to those pictures. Enjoy, and please leave comments if you have any thoughts or questions you’d like to share.

Okay, full disclosure – The Jaguar XK-SS is one of this author’s top ten favorite sports car designs of all time. This partially-civilized, D-Type-derived, semi-comp car is just plain awesome. Seeing one of them at a museum or event is like glimpsing the Pietà as you enter the Vatican – Its beauty can overwhelm you if you’re not prepared to see it. Imagine our delight, then, when we learned that the organizers of the 2010 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance had put together a small gathering of XK-SS roadsters to celebrate Jaguar’s 75th birthday. It’s their birthday, and we get the presents.

Just 25 of these incredible machines were built during their short run – a tragic fire at the factory took nine of them and halted development of not just the XK-SS, but of the D-Type as a whole. Try as they might, the Pebble Beach folks simply couldn’t get all 16 of the survivors together for this occasion…but how does a full dozen sound? Any event that has one SS in the field is pretty remarkable in our books. Having more than one is almost unheard of. Having a dozen on hand, all in one place at one time…in an almost perfect line on the Pebble Beach golf links with nothing behind them but the course and bay? Sublime.

Why does the XK-SS draw such admiration? Well, all you need do is look at it and you have your answer, but there is much more to the story. When Jaguar withdrew from racing at the end of 1955, they had a few spare D-Type chassis on hand. They also had something of a budget crisis at the time. Why not make a few changes for road use and offer the unfinished cars to the public? Jaguar added an extra seat, another door, a full-width windshield, luggage rack and folding top and the XK-SS was born. It weighed but 2,000 pounds and had the D-Type’s 250-horsepower 3.4-liter straight-six under its shapely bonnet. It only weighed about 100 pounds more than the full-on racer and was sold at a 30 percent discount over the D.

Doesn’t that strike you as something of a bargain for a wild, hairy beast allowed to prowl the street? Steve McQueen thought so. In fact, the legendary actor and racer owned the same example twice. After buying one new, he had the interior customized by artist Von Dutch. He later sold the car but missed it so much that he bought it back a few years later. He had the car in his collection until the day he died. It’s now in the Petersen Museum in Los Angeles, but was in Pebble Beach for the Concours on that magical Sunday…along with eleven of its friends.

While we had heard rumblings that Porsche was going to show its hot new 918 Spyder Hybrid Concept in  Pebble Beach this year, it had started to seem like the car was only going to be shown to a select few at private events scattered around the Monterey Peninsula during the week.

Well, on Sunday, right in front of the Pebble Beach Lodge, during the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, the company surprised us by driving the hybrid supercar up to the concept lawn for all to see – and hear. They did a quick turn around after sitting still for a second and as the V8 rumble died away, the car started moving forward again. A couple of people were taken by surprise as they thought the driver may have forgotten to engage the parking brake, but no, the car had switched over to battery power.

This hybrid has been greenlighted for production and it is rumored that the racing RS Spyder’s 3.4-liter V8 will be the engine that adds grunt to the two electric motors driving the front wheels. Expect around 700 horsepower and a price tag over $600,000.

Pebble Beach is fast becoming one of the best places for new car debuts. Besides seeing the McLaren MP4-12C, Fiorvanti SP1, Perana Z-One, Morgan EvaGT, Jaguar XK175, Jaguar XJ75 Platinum, Boss 302 Mustang, Veyron Super Sport, Lotus Exos T125, Lotus Evora GT4 Cup, and so on and so on, we also got to see the new Bentley Continental GTC and GTC Speed 80-11 Editions. These 80-11 models, designed exclusively for the North American market, will be limited to just 80 units each. The “11″ in the title refers to 2011, the model year of these specials.

These are basically trim packages for the Contis, adding things like 20-inch, 14-spoke polished wheels, and red calipers on the Speed, but they look tasteful. While the 80-11 Editions will be available in any Bentley color, they’ve introduced a new color on them as well – Midnight – which will be exclusive to these models. If the wheels or special color don’t tip you off to the special nature of these vehicles, you might be able to spot them by their little Union Jack badges on the front fenders.

The latest rumor surrounding the upcoming Lotus Esprit is a real duesie. According to the folks at Inside Line, Lotus will announce at this year’s Paris Motor Show that the new Esprit will be headed to a showroom near you in the not too distant future. Check that, make it two Esprits are on their way. It seems there will be a base Esprit powered by a suitable V8 engine, and a higher performance version – possibly an S model if Lotus follows form – that will feature, wait for it…the same 552-horsepower, V10 engine found in the current Lexus LFA.

Perhaps even more impressive is the rumor that the base model will receive the same 5.0-liter V8 found in the Lexus IS-F. Producing 416 horsepower – and one of the best sounds around – that bent-eight is no slouch. Both engine choices seem to make sense given the close partnership between Lotus and Toyota of late, so we’re gonna put this is the strong possibility category, rather than calling it an out-and-out rumor. We’ll know for sure when Lotus takes the mic in Paris next month.

Bugatti made big news last month when it unveiled the Veyron 16.4 Super Sport. The 1200-horsepower supercar smashed the production car speed record by reaching nearly 268 mph at the Volkswagen proving grounds. It’s not just a top speed monster either, as it also turned the fastest ever lap around the Top Gear test track at the hands of the Stig.

We’ve previously only seen pictures of the Super Sport model that actually set the record – the polarizing orange and black one – but now we know that the Bugatti factory has produced at least two examples. The Super Sport made its North American debut at the Quail Motorsports Gathering last week done up in a gorgeous blue carbon fiber. We have to say we much prefer it over its counterpart.

The record-setting Super Sport was also in town and turned up at Laguna Seca to pace a special class of thirty-something vintage Bugatti GP cars during the 2010 Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion. Although we begged them to go for the production car lap record set by the Dodge Viper a while back, they limited the big Bug to a simple parade lap. Still, the presence of this thing is undeniable.

It’s an Evora but not as you know it

Ahead of the official unveil at the Paris Motor Show on September 30th, Lotus announce the latest evolution of the award winning Evora – the Evora S and Evora IPS (Intelligent Precision Shift) option.

Lotus has taken the award winning Evora and re-created it with a 350 PS 3.5l V6 engine to create the Evora S. Dany Bahar Lotus’ Chief Executive Officer summed it up beautifully when he said: “You don’t realise what you were missing from your driving experience until you get behind the wheel of the Evora S.”

So apart from the obvious power difference, how is the Evora S different to the standard Evora? It’s another question we put to the CEO (given that he’s spent a little time behind the wheel, we thought he’d be best placed to answer questions). This is what he said: “It’s the next level of Evora experience. It communicates with you better, the suspension setting has been fine tuned for added power and control so it responds even more to direction. It’s an instinctual car, the experience is pure.”

“We were proud of the Evora but we’re even prouder of the Evora S, I feel like it does the true Lotus experience justice. The really great thing is that as we move forward the standard Evora should also benefit from some of these developments.”

The Evora S comes with a sport pack as standard featuring a ‘sport’ button which allows the driver to control throttle response and activate the exhaust by-pass valve. The sport button also raises the instantaneous rev limit and changes the dynamic stability control settings resulting in a total experience change. There are cross-drilled brakes for improved cooling. And here’s a heads up for those who buy into the old adage ‘you can tell the men from the boys by the size of their toys’: the external emotion of the Evora S has been improved with a completely new active exhaust which means that at the push of a button the car sounds just as dramatic as it feels.

Commenting on the Evora S, Lotus Chief Commercial Officer Andreas Prillmann said: “The Evora S is a natural progression for us but more than that, it’s a taste of what people can come to expect from the next generation of Lotus cars. It retains core Lotus values such as performance through lightweight but it also gives more than that. It’s the perfect combination of top performance, style and comfort. Form doesn’t sacrifice function in the case of the Evora S.”

So there you have it folks, the next generation of Lotus Evora, the Evora S, set to be unveiled at the Paris Motor Show.

But that’s not all. In addition to the Evora S, Lotus also presents the IPS (Intelligent Precision Shift) option. This inception of the seven-time-award-winning (who’s counting? We are!) Evora sees an automatic 6-speed gearbox with Lotus developed transmission control with a 3.5 l V6 engine delivering 280 PS assuring a superior automatic driving experience.

The IPS version of the Evora allows the driver to switch between manual paddle shift and automatic drive modes. The driver also has the option of selecting ‘sport’ mode which showcases the Lotus sport driving experience allowing the driver to really feel each gear shift and be in complete control of the transmission.

Commenting on the development Dany Bahar said: “The Evora IPS is set to broaden the appeal of the Evora and reach out to a slightly different market. We hope it will be popular with established automatic locations such as Asia, the Middle East and the US. It’s been a long time since Lotus created an automatic and we’ve spent a great deal of time refining this one to make sure that it perfectly complements the Evora drive experience.”

The Morgan Motor Company has been making new cars all along, but some people seem to have forgotten that fact, as most of their “new” models look a lot like their old models. That started to change with the introduction of their Aero cars a few years ago – and we predict the name “Morgan” will be a little more common once their latest concept hits showrooms. The company took the wraps off their new EvaGT in Pebble Beach, right in front of the Pebble Beach Lodge on the concept lawn during the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. We had seen a partial sketch a few weeks ago, but holy wow is this car stunning in person. The stats aren’t bad either: It uses a 3.0-liter BMW straight six that produces 306 horsepower, a six-speed automatic or manual transmission, weighs just 2,755 pounds, gets 40 miles per gallon (Imperial) and can scoot from 0-60 in 4.5 seconds.