Monterey Car Week highlights extreme performance, rarity, and high value, but buyer priorities are shifting away from peak power toward driver engagement and emotional design. Electric powertrains previously drove numerous hypercar debuts with extreme acceleration, but interest in internal-combustion feel and restomod authenticity is resurging. Restomods update classic cars for modern drivability while retaining original character. Eccentrica's Titano exemplifies that trend, emphasizing sensory feedback over headline horsepower. Industry voices note that achieving 1,000 hp has become commonplace, while brands offering tuned sensory experiences and purity of feel aim to better connect with discerning buyers.
Monterey Car Week is an annual celebration of automotive culture at the extremes: extreme performance, extreme rarity, and extreme value. Cars offering more than 1,000 hp (746 kW) are de rigueur, "unique" models are everywhere you look, and machines costing well into seven figures are entry-level. A few years ago, many of the new cars debuting during Car Week focused on outright speed and performance above all else, relying on electric powertrains to deliver physics-defying acceleration and ballistic speed.
They're called restomods, classic cars brought up to date with modern drivability but keeping the original feel. LA-based Singer Vehicle Design is the Porsche-based poster child for this movement, but San Marino-based Eccentrica earned plenty of attention in Monterey for its reimagining of one of the ultimate icons of the '90s, the Lamborghini Diablo. The company's latest creation, Titano, promises "Raw '90s soul meet[ing] purposeful modern craft."
Maurizio Reggiani, former Lamborghini CTO and now advisor to Eccentrica, told me that feel is far more important than outright performance in this segment. "We want the people sitting in Eccentrica to really perceive the street, perceive the acceleration, perceive the braking, perceive the steering," he said. "The power to have 1,000 hp is easy. I don't want to say it is a commodity, but more or less," Reggiani continued.
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