Artomobilia is one of the most eclectic automotive events in America: more than a century of automotive art and design, from brass-era cars of the early 1900s to contemporary supercars, displayed free on the streets of downtown Carmel.
What began in 2008 with 40 cars now draws more than 500 entrants and 20,000 guests in a single day. This event celebrates the art, design, and craftsmanship of the automobile.
This year’s Artomobilia takes place from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 29, and is free for the public to attend.
How it started
Artomobilia launched in 2008 at the invitation of the City of Carmel, which wanted an event series that would bring people into the Arts & Design District and reintroduce them to a downtown then in its early days. The District looked nothing like it does today.
In the years since, the investment in the Arts & Design District and Midtown has been extraordinary for a city Carmel’s size, and it has helped make Carmel one of the most livable cities in the country. In May 2026, U.S. News & World Report named Carmel the No. 1 Best Place to Live in America, out of more than 850 cities, ranking it in the top 2 percent nationally for quality of life.
Who runs it
Artomobilia was co-founded by John Leonard, who continues to serve as Director. The organization also produces surrounding Hamilton County events, including the Porsche Classic Restoration Challenge at Motor District in Westfield and the Veloce Hangar Party at the Jet Access Center in Zionsville.
What’s new & notable in 2026
- Jeff Lane, motoring mad scientist. Jeff Lane, founder of the Lane Motor Museum, is a recognized and noteworthy auto enthusiast and motoring mad scientist, recently featured in Road & Track among many others across his career in the automotive community. His collection is known for the wild, the unique, and the gloriously strange. If the fun, the fantastic, and the weird had a home in the automotive world, it would be the Lane Museum.
- The Lane Museum Collection Parade. Normally you would travel to the museum’s 132,000 square-foot home in Nashville to see these machines. This year they come to Carmel, where six select oddities won’t just be on display, they’ll be in motion. The only chance to see them move is as they parade at low speed into the Artomobilia display field along Range Line Road, driving into place under their own power the morning of the show.
- The cars. Six extraordinary vehicles, each a story in itself:
- 1932 Helicron: A one-of-a-kind, propeller-driven French car found in a barn in 2000, still road-legal in France, and pushed along by a propeller spinning at its nose.
- 1959 Citroën ID 19: The elegant French saloon whose hydropneumatic self-leveling suspension and aerodynamic shape made it decades ahead of its time.
- 1964 Peel P-50 Replica: A nod to the Guinness-record smallest production car ever made, 54 inches long and around 130 pounds, with no reverse gear (you drag it by a handle).
- 2013 Peel Trident Replica: The bubble-topped, clear-domed two-seat sibling of the P50, a microcar that looks straight out of a 1960s space cartoon.
- 1947 Tatra T87: The streamlined, air-cooled rear-V8 Czech saloon with a dorsal fin and a dark legend: so many German officers died driving its 100-mph chassis that they were reportedly banned from it.
- 1963 Amphicar 770: The most successful amphibious car ever built, a convertible that swims on twin propellers and carries the highest tailfins of any production car.
Photo provided
- More than a mile of downtown. Artomobilia’s defining feature is where it happens: woven through the streets of downtown Carmel, not staged in a lot. The 2026 footprint spans three corridors, 1,500 feet along Main Street, 2,771 on Range Line Road, and 2,000 on Monon Boulevard. That is over 6,200 linear feet of street, and with cars lining both curbs, roughly 2.4 miles of display for guests to walk, from West Main at 3rd Ave SW to East Main at 1st Ave SE, North to South Range Line, and down Monon Boulevard into Midtown.
- More than 25 classes and corrals. Over two dozen judged collector car classes and display-only enthusiast corrals span the full history of the automobile.
- Supported by national and local sponsors. A free event of this scale carries a real cost. National partners include Porsche North America, Barrett-Jackson, Hylant, Evans May Wealth, Autogeek, and Jet Access; regional and local support comes from Tom Wood Porsche, Gator Motorsport, Dreyer & Reinbold BMW, Pristine Film Solutions, and Meyer Najem. The event is also supported by the City of Carmel and its administrative, Police, Fire, and Street departments.
- More extraordinary machines. Select vehicles from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum and race cars from the Putnam Park Road Course will also be on display, adding racing pedigree to the field.
- The Paloozas and their clubs. Marque-specific gatherings featuring exceptional cars from Porsche, BMW, Lotus, and Mercedes-Benz, with Artomobilia hosting the local enthusiast club for each marque.
- Art beyond the cars. In partnership with the City of Carmel, Artomobilia will host portions of Carmel on Canvas, a plein air paint-out exhibition and contest.
- A cause. The Artistry & Elegance Ladies’ Luncheon at MATADOR benefits St. Mary’s Early Childhood Center.
About Jeff Lane
Jeff Lane is a collector of the rarest kind, an engineer’s mind and a showman’s eye who founded the Lane Motor Museum in 2002 and turned a former Nashville bakery into the largest collection of European automobiles in America. Under his stewardship it has become a sanctuary for the strange and the brilliant, and Lane himself a beloved fixture of the collector world, sought out by enthusiasts, journalists, and the merely curious for a mind that seems to hold the entire eccentric history of the automobile.