What is Arizona Car Week?
Nobody planned it. In 1971 two men named Barrett and Jackson auctioned some cars in Scottsdale; over the next fifty years so many other auction houses, shows, and gatherings piled onto the same late-January dates that the cluster needed a name. Arizona Car Week is that name — an umbrella over roughly ten days in which the world’s largest collector-car marketplace materializes in the desert and sells a quarter-billion dollars of automobiles.
The anchor is Barrett-Jackson at WestWorld: nine days, nearly 2,000 cars, a crowd that dwarfs any other event but the Phoenix Open. Around it orbit the boutique sales — Bonhams at the Westin Kierland inside Scottsdale, RM Sotheby’s at the Biltmore in Phoenix — plus the Arizona Concours d’Elegance on the Civic Center lawn, the Copperstate 1000 rally’s send-off, and dozens of cars-and-coffee mornings, dealer open houses, and resort parties.
The roster has churned constantly — Russo and Steele and Gooding are gone, others have moved across city lines — which is why a map of who is actually in Scottsdale is worth having. This is that map.
The week, venue by venue
WestWorld (North Scottsdale): Barrett-Jackson, the volume sale and the party. Weekdays for the cars, weekends for the scene; the docket runs from $20,000 drivers to seven-figure headliners, most at no reserve. Its October fall auction, added in 2024, is the same show at a third the size.
Westin Kierland (Kierland): Bonhams’ one-day sale, 60–80 curated European and prewar cars, with two preview days on the resort lawn. The best close-up access of the week.
Scottsdale Civic Center (Old Town): the Arizona Concours d’Elegance, a judged show of about 100 invited cars on the lawns, the Sunday after Barrett-Jackson opens. Nothing is for sale; everything is worth seeing.
Across the line: RM Sotheby’s has held court at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix since 1999 and regularly posts the week’s single biggest result. MAG Auctions runs in Peoria. Worldwide Auctioneers, which operated on a closed dealership lot on McDowell Road in Scottsdale from 2017 to 2019, moved to Tempe in 2020 but kept “The Scottsdale Auction” in its name.
Everywhere else: cars-and-coffee at Market Street at DC Ranch and the Penske automall, rally send-offs, dealer events along Scottsdale Road, and hotel lawns full of consignments. The Arizona Car Week calendar site lists 30-plus events; most are free.
Logistics: hotels near WestWorld book out by fall. The Loop 101 corridor between Kierland and WestWorld is the week’s spine; Old Town is the dinner. Weather is the best of the year — 65 and sunny — which is precisely why the cars come.
How the circuit assembled itself
The economics are simple. January weather draws collectors and money to Scottsdale anyway; Barrett-Jackson proved by the 1990s that they would buy cars while here; and every subsequent house wanted a piece of the same audience on the same dates. Silver Auctions set up at Fort McDowell in 1992. RM took the Biltmore in 1999. Russo and Steele launched its auction-in-the-round in 2001 as the enthusiast alternative. Gooding arrived at Fashion Square in 2008 with the Pebble Beach playbook. Bonhams opened at Kierland in 2012, and the Arizona Concours debuted at the Biltmore in 2014. By the mid-2010s, “Arizona Auction Week” was a global fixture on the collector calendar alongside Monterey and Amelia Island.
Then the churn. The 2019–2022 stretch removed Russo and Steele (venue dispute, then closure), Silver (merged into MAG), the concours (sponsorship), Gooding (pandemic, then acquisition by Christie’s), and Leake, whose single 2020 sale at Salt River Fields featured the John Staluppi collection and never returned. Worldwide decamped to Tempe. For a few Januaries the week felt smaller inside Scottsdale’s actual borders even as Barrett-Jackson’s numbers grew.
The rebound is recent and visible: the concours’ 2024 revival on a renovated Civic Center lawn, Barrett-Jackson’s October addition the same year, and its expansion to nine January days in 2027. What Scottsdale lost in auction count it has gained in a broader mix — one mega-sale, one boutique sale, one judged show, and an ecosystem of free gatherings.
Reading the week like a local
The three things the visitors’ guides won’t tell you. First, Tuesday through Thursday at WestWorld is where the actual buying happens and where you can see cars without a wall of phones. Second, preview beats auction at the boutique houses — the cars are more accessible and the specialists more talkative before the gavel. Third, the concours on Sunday is the week’s best value: fifty dollars, a lawn, a hundred exceptional cars, and the same collectors who spent seven figures the day before, standing around in the sun talking about them.