Sixteen months after the Palisades Fire incinerated 6,800 structures and scorched 23,448 acres of northern Los Angeles, a car show is rolling into the charred streets. The Pacific Palisades Motor Classic, scheduled for June 13, will be the first automotive gathering in the neighborhood since the January 2025 disaster. Its organizer lost his own home in the blaze.
David O’Connell isn’t pretending this is just about pretty machinery. He’s closing down four streets around the Pacific Palisades Green and filling them with more than 200 cars, from a Porsche 918 Spyder to hot rods to new Ferraris. The backdrop won’t be manicured lawns and boutique storefronts — it’ll be scorched business buildings and empty lots where homes used to stand.
“You’re gonna see brand-new Ferraris up against burnt-out business buildings,” O’Connell told Road & Track. “It’s going to be pretty impactful.”
The event is free to the public, and that’s deliberate. O’Connell doesn’t just want spectators — he wants foot traffic. Warm bodies in streets that have felt abandoned for over a year. Proceeds from the $125-per-car exhibitor fees and vendor space rentals go directly to The Lowe Family YMCA in the neighborhood.
Pacific Palisades remains a community mid-recovery, and that’s a generous description. Scorched structures are still a common sight. Rebuilding permits have moved at the pace you’d expect from Los Angeles bureaucracy. Residents who stayed are grinding through it. Many who left haven’t come back.
O’Connell spent most of his career in the automotive industry, so a car show is the tool he knows best. Five vehicle categories, 3,000 expected attendees, and a simple thesis: get people back on the map. Generate awareness, create commerce, and remind the rest of L.A. — and frankly, the rest of the country — that Pacific Palisades still exists and still needs help.
“There’s a light at the end of the tunnel,” O’Connell said. “We’ve had a hell of a year.”
Car shows have always served a dual purpose in communities like this. On the surface, they’re about admiring machines and kicking tires. Underneath, they’re about gathering — about choosing to be somewhere together.
After Katrina, car culture helped knit neighborhoods in the Gulf Coast back together. After the Camp Fire gutted Paradise, California, cruise nights became tiny acts of defiance against erasure. The Pacific Palisades Motor Classic fits that lineage.
A Porsche 918 parked where a building burned isn’t tone-deaf. It’s a statement that something beautiful can occupy the same space as something devastating, and people can show up for both.
Registration is open now for exhibitors and vendors. If you’ve got a car worth showing and $125, O’Connell wants you there. If you’ve just got curiosity and a free Saturday, he wants you there more.
Every day, O’Connell says, the momentum builds — a few more cars, another sponsor, another person who wants in. That’s how recoveries actually work. Not with a single grand gesture but with one small commitment after another, stacked until they become something that matters.
June 13 in Pacific Palisades. Ferraris and burnt buildings. It’ll look strange. It should.
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