What was the Grand Prix of Scottsdale?
The Grand Prix of Scottsdale was a street race of tiny, hand-built, 1920s-style racing cars run around a half-mile circuit on the Scottsdale Waterfront on a November weekend in 2015, 2016 and 2017. It was, for three years, the most charming motorsport event in America, and if that sounds like exaggeration, you did not see it.
The cars were Vintage Mini Racers, built in Mesa by Vintage Kart Company: about 300 pounds on a 200cc engine, bodied as tributes to Bugattis and Alfas, with teams of up to six drivers sharing each one. The course started on the Marshall Way Bridge over the Arizona Canal, ran along Goldwater Boulevard past the Fifth Avenue shops, crossed Fifth Avenue and came back to the bridge. Hay bales and barricades lined it. Teams raced in period costume: leather helmets, goggles, white scarves streaming at a heroic twenty-something miles per hour. A public-address announcer narrated it like Monaco in 1929, and Mayor Jim Lane waved the flag.
It was free to watch, funny on purpose, sincerely competitive underneath the bit, and instantly beloved. And then it was gone: the fourth running was postponed in 2018, the official site citing, memorably, a barricade shortage, and the race never returned. It lives on in this guide’s past-events file as proof of a rule every city forgets: the best events are not always the biggest ones.
The weekend, as it ran
Friday: the gala. “Gatsby Under the Stars” took over the Marshall Way Bridge at 7 p.m., 21 and over, black tie encouraged, with the cars displayed in team livery, Jazz Age music, passed hors d’oeuvres and, in 2017, a $200 gaming voucher with the ticket. It was the fundraiser, benefiting Southwest Human Development, the state’s largest early-childhood nonprofit, and in 2017 it added an “It’s a Date” auction of fifteen Valley singles for the Care Fund.
Saturday: the preview. Gatsby lawn parties on the Waterfront with beer, wine and cocktails; a “Concours d’Grand Prix” of the cars; and a Concours d’Kids where children drove minis, made crafts and played games. Southwest Human Development hosted the gardens.
Sunday: the race. A trackside “Dine and Drive” breakfast unveiled the winner’s cup, the official start came at 11 a.m., and the racing ran until about 4 in a few 45-minute sessions with 32 to 40 cars on course. Radio host Dave Pratt was master of ceremonies in 2016; the mayor rode in the pace car. Trophies went to the top three teams and the fastest individual lap, and the Vintage Victory Awards closed the day on the bridge with Victory Beer’s name on them. Viewing was free along the barricades and near pit row, and the restaurants along Goldwater ran race-day specials.
The cars. Cyclekarting is an international garage hobby with informal rules: a small racer around a modest single-cylinder engine, light, skinny-tired, and bodied as a tribute to a pre-war Grand Prix car. The hobby’s ethos ranks craftsmanship, costume and camaraderie above speed, which is capped by physics and good sense at roughly “exhilarating lawnmower.” A ClassicCars.com writer who drove in 2016 called her car nimble but squirrelly, “painfully slow” on the long straight, and watched one competitor lose a wheel and another flip; at times, she wrote, it felt more like a demolition derby than a proper race. Teams were not hired entertainment. Companies, friends and corporate rivals bought or built a car through Vintage Kart Company and spent months on their personas, and that authenticity read from the curb.
Why good small events die
The Grand Prix’s death certificate lists “barricade shortage,” but the underlying condition was the one that kills most beloved small events: street closures are expensive and volunteer energy is finite. Closing the Waterfront and Goldwater Boulevard for a weekend costs real money in permits, police, insurance and, yes, barricade rental, and those costs do not care whether your event is charming. Big events amortize them across ticket revenue and sponsor decks; a free kart race amortizes them across a gala, some beer gardens and goodwill. The 2017 edition had the City of Scottsdale and Experience Scottsdale as hosts and Hagerty, the Hyatt Regency, iHeart Media and Russo and Steele among its partners, and it still could not make a fourth year. Three editions is, in that light, a heroic run.
The loss stings because the event occupied a niche nothing has refilled. Scottsdale does enormous spectacle superbly, 700,000 at the golf, nine days of auctions, and does weekly rituals well, but the middle register of small, weird and free is chronically underpopulated. The Grand Prix proved the appetite exists; its organizers claimed 20,000 people over the 2017 weekend, drawn out of proportion to any marketing, purely on delight.
The diaspora, and the case for revival
The machines did not vanish. Vintage Kart Company still builds them, Valley hobbyists still gather to run their racers at car shows and club events, and the Goodguys orbit occasionally sights the little cars among the hot rods. The community that made the race possible is intact; only the street closure is missing. Which means the Grand Prix of Scottsdale is that rarest thing in the lost events file: not dead, exactly, but dormant, awaiting an organizer with permitting stamina and a weakness for leather helmets.
The Scottsdale angle
The Waterfront was the right stage and still is. The Soleri Bridge and the canal banks form a natural grandstand, Goldwater’s short blocks give a half-mile lap three corners and a straight, and the Fifth Avenue patios put the crowd at curb height with a drink in hand. Watching a pack of tiny Bugattis slither past the district’s galleries was peak Scottsdale absurdity, the town’s car-culture grandeur refracted through its sense of humor. If that is you, the barricade market has recovered. Ask anyone who stood on Goldwater Boulevard in 2017: the demand is waiting.