Canepa

Attended a private tour of Canepa through my boyfriends’ work and was not expecting to be thoroughly fascinated by the history of cars.
I also wasn’t expecting to be enthralled for the 2.5 hours of the tour, either! Our tour guide and historian, John, made every minute of the tour interesting, fun-​filled, entertaining, and was enthusiastic the entire time. It helped, I’m sure, that he truly loves and is passionate about cars and working at Canepa.
We got a private tour of the showroom, restoration workshop, photo area, and museum which were all SO CLEAN and organized. It was incredibly impressive.
Canepa is so much more than an auto repair shop. It’s a place holding so much history and knowledge about cars, with people working there that truly care about what they are doing. There are some rare, classic, and SUPER expensive cars. And the fact that Bruce Canepa himself still runs the shop, races the cars, and is 110% invested in making sure the shop lives up to his name, is rare and kind of awesome. He sounds like a total bad ass dude.
It’s certainly a prestigious place and rightfully so.
I can only review on the basis of working with Canepa on a tour-​only level but the customer service, the people, and the facility itself speaks highly.

AWESOME! Yes, awesome is the first thing that comes to mind when I discovered this place today! Wow, a classy car museum with car showroom that is totally free to explore. The only car museum that I have been to that would be better then this one is the Blackhawk Museum that costs $ 10 admission! This museum on the first floor has a showroom of classic cars that were restored to their original glory and are now for sale. The second floor has race cars of all kinds and some of these cars have actually been driven at Leguna Seca Mazda Raceway. There is an amazing video that play on this floor depicting a race car driver racing around the famous corkscrew racetrack. It gives you a perfect view of the track as the race car driver goes around it. Sadly, this very cool video is apparently not available to purchase.
Pros:
–free admission!
–great selection of classic and race cars — definitely a place for the car enthusiast!
–friendly staff
–very nice, organized and clean layout
Cons:
–building is hidden (have lived near Scotts Valley for about 20 years and often come up there but did not know about this museum until today!
–as mentioned above– wish that awesome Leguna Seca race video was for sale!
* Question: Does this museum have a weekly/​monthly e-​newsletter and are there ever any events that this museum sponsors? I wonder…

Took my 9 year old son there to look at some classic cars. It is truly amazing to have a collection like this in Santa Cruz. The quality of classics was impressive. We came to see the 1954 Mercedes-​Benz 300SL Gullwing, and was surprised to see bunch of my childhood favorites. The people were very friendly and were happy to show my son the cars. Canepa is a must visit.

I contacted Canepa after seeing one of their vehicles online.
The particular vehicle was priced higher than market value, but based on details on the Internet, I thought it might be worth it. (Internet site specifically stated it was Concours condition).
Fortunately, I sent a professional Automobile Inspector to view the car.
The review clearly stated this car was not concours condition, in fact there were 2 different colors of paint on the car found, chips, trim was pitted, needed new rubber around windows, undercoating, etc…
I thought, well if we can negotiate the price I can overlook their «mis-​representation».
But once I started to look into the shops that supposedly did the work, they could not produce any receipts, I even contacted the body shops and they had no record of doing the work.
I also asked them to substantiate their pricing, they claimed they put another 250 hours into the car. I asked them to provide receipts from their own shop which they could not.
Ok, at this point I said, there are too many holes in their story and walked away…
My advice to anyone, really check out what you are buying from them, ask for receipts, and investigate anything they tell you… Better yet, look somewhere else!

This is in Scotts Valley? Would seem to be more at home in San Francisco or Las Vegas. Be prepared to drool. Beautiful exotic collector cars, many for sale. Wander amongst vintage Porsches and Mercedes, a Bugatti Veyron, formula race cars, and vintage Indian motorcycles. When I was there there was a Mercedes gull-​wing on display. Upstairs in back you have a balcony-​level view of their immaculate shop floor where restoration is underway. Be sure to bring the checkbook with the big balance, the minimum price I noticed was about $ 450,000 and way upwards from there!

A must see for any car fan.
Amazing cars and wonderful classic race car museum.
They hosted a fundraiser for the Santa Cruz Symphony and we got to tour the shop and see the works in progress. Amazing time!

If you didn’t know, Canepa has an open house called «Coffee and Cars» every second Saturday from 8am to noon. You can visit the museum, shop and sales floor. There is also the variety of sports cars all over the parking lot with various groups. It is here where you can see «historically correct» 100point cars and motorcycles. Feel free to wander even though I didn’t see anyone wanting to test drive anything. well maybe they come back. I did see someone discussing a partial body restoration.
Canepa is the primer location to get your Porsche 959 worked on. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, Bill Gates had one. They aren’t that snobby though, there was a historical Abarth tuned Fiat there.
Highly recommend for any automobile enthusiast.

Mind boggling collection of track Porches and retired super cars. If you are car or Porsche buff like me and find yourself in Scott’s Valley, drop in for a look-​see.

Surprising little museum tucked away just off Highway 17 in Scotts Valley. I don’t know much about cars, but my boyfriend is a fanatic and I took him here for his birthday. He usually doesn’t like car museums because they have the same old stuff he’s seen everywhere, but he was really excited about seeing a lot of the cars on display here, the names of which I don’t even remember (Lola? Supervette? Shadow?). He said they had a lot of one-​of-​a-​kind priceless cars that you don’t see very often here, ones with a lot of history and others that have been restored and customized by Canepa.
The building has two floors open to the public and it’s quite small and not very busy at all (only one person working at the front desk; we wouldn’t have even known about the upstairs if she hadn’t mentioned it when we were almost on our way out). We went through it in about an hour and a half because he stopped at every single car and drooled over it and told me all these random facts he knew, so I don’t know how long it would take if you were just to go in and browse the collection.

This is a review of the showroom/​museum Canepa maintains; it is open and free, 9 – 3 pm on Saturdays. It is free, and has a nicely varied collection of cars on display; highlights include a 1970s can-​am car, an A/​C Cobra, quite a few Porsches (356, 959), a Lister Jaguar from the 1960s, and, other odds & ends. Quite a few race cars, neat unique vehicles. The are also some motorbikes, but they all looked 1) new and 2) I don’t know much about bikes.
If you’re popping over the hill, and want to do something in Scotts Valley on your way to/​from Roaring Camp, Henry Cowell, or the Mystery Spot, it is close to the highway, and a nice little break.
If you’d like to be my friend, the Lister would make an excellent gift.
Oh, and the door handles on the lobby are awesome.