The Pebble Beach Councours d’Elégance and its attendant events are all about the cars: classic beauties, restored racers, debuts from luxury automakers. But this year, motorcycles got some love too.

Two wheelers of every description lined the grass at this year’s Quail: A Motorsports Gathering, which often is the swankiest event in the week-long extravaganza that hits Monterey, California every year. Our favorites were the sleek machines of the “Sports and Racing Motorcycles” class. Most of them were vintage European machines of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, with special attention paid to the work of Moto Guzzi, and one especially loved Brough Superior. But there were more modern machines among the antique iron and, best of all, no squids.