By 7 a.m. on the first Saturday of the month, the parking lot at Market Street at DC Ranch starts to fill with cars that don't usually share a lot. You might see a vintage Porsche 911 a few spaces from a late-model exotic, with a Jeep parked nearby. Spectators walk through for free until 10 a.m. Nobody hands out trophies, and nobody parks their own car on display unless they're a member.
This is the Scottsdale Motorsports Gathering, run by a private car club called Scuderia Southwest. If you live in Silverleaf, Market Street is where you get coffee and run errands. What's harder to tell from the sidewalk is that this calm monthly morning is what remains of one of the largest regular car events the Valley has had. The organizers scaled it down deliberately, and the smaller size is what makes it fit a neighborhood shopping center.
What actually shows up at 20789 N. Pima Road
The gathering runs from 7 to 10 a.m. on the first Saturday of every month at Market Street, 20789 N. Pima Road. The club's own page says plainly that "we no longer do public car shows," and it tells anyone hoping to display a car to look elsewhere around town. Event listings for the coming months say only member cars are displayed, spectators are welcome, and no registration is required.
The club doesn't define its taste by brand. Its membership page says the roots of the group are vintage European sports cars. Members own everything from cars "from the very dawn of the automotive era" to late-1960s American muscle and current hypercars. It also says members own Jeeps and Broncos. Three cars it names as a natural fit are a Porsche 356, a Jaguar E-Type and a Ferrari 512BBi.
The club's page describes a social morning. Members catch up on projects, and people curious about joining are invited to come meet a few members first.
The same gathering once needed a much bigger lot
According to the club, Scuderia Southwest began in the summer of 2001, when a few friends met for coffee. Co-founder Steve Mraovic is credited as its founding figure. In a December 2024 interview with Images Arizona, club president David Crofford called it "Arizona's original cars and coffee gathering." He said it eventually drew "up to 800 display cars and 3,500–5,000 spectators monthly."
A crowd that size kept outgrowing its venues. Here are the stops the press recorded before Market Street:
- 2017, Shops at Gainey Village. The Arizona Republic's AZCentral reported on the growth under the headline "Cars N' Coffee finds it needs a bigger cup", describing an event that needed a new home.
- 2019, Scottsdale 101 Shopping Center. Highline Autos photographed the March 2019 event there. It described a year-round monthly gathering from 7 to 10 a.m., free for both spectators and car exhibitors.
- March 2020, still at Scottsdale 101. The ClassicCars.com Journal reported that unsafe exits by a small number of drivers were putting the venue contract at risk. That month's event had police on site, cones, and a slow, guided exit.
- December 2020, Market Street at DC Ranch. The club's own records list a Dec. 5, 2020 gathering at the current location.
At its biggest, the event filled a regional shopping center lot and needed traffic control to get people out. That's a very different setup from the one Market Street hosts now.
Why the club chose fewer cars
Crofford told Images Arizona the decision came in 2019, when the club chose "to step back from the 'show' business model and transform into a private membership club." The club's membership page explains the reasoning more plainly than most organizations would put in writing:
"After many years organizing and running large car show events we decided that it had gotten too big and too hard and just generally a pain. We're a bunch of old guys and we don't want a full time job."
The page goes on to describe a cycle. Costs once reached as much as $2,500 per monthly event. Paying for that took sponsors, and sponsors wanted big crowds. The club concluded that the spectators had become its real customer and that "the person left out in this was the car guy." Annual dues and an application process replaced sponsor money, which covered expenses and gave the club a way to vet members.
Those choices shaped the event you see today. With no sponsors, the event no longer needed a big crowd. With member-only displays, the number of cars on the lot depends on the size of the club, so it no longer grows with each month's word of mouth. On scale alone, an event built around a few hundred dues-paying owners can fit in a lot where an 800-car show can't.
Market Street got the smaller version
The exact month of the move isn't on record. The club was at Scottsdale 101 in March 2020 and at Market Street by December 2020. So the event that arrived in DC Ranch was already the reorganized one. It had member displays, a defined group of owners and a smaller footprint.
In Crofford's words to Images Arizona, "the beautiful venue perfectly showcases our members' vehicles, but we're intentionally not a 'car show.'" He described a club built around technical discussions, organized drives, garage and museum tours, and guest speakers, with the monthly morning as its public face. The club's membership page currently lists a cap of 200 members and says applications are temporarily on hold. That status can change at any time.
For anyone who lives within a short drive of Pima Road, the practical effect is that one of the Valley's best-known collector car mornings now happens at the shopping center many of them already use. The cars are the same caliber that once drew thousands to bigger lots, and the morning ends at 10 a.m.
Two dates before the year closes
The Nov. 7 gathering falls two days after this post goes up. The last gathering of 2026 doubles as a toy collection.
| Date | Time | What's planned |
|---|---|---|
| Saturday, Nov. 7, 2026 | 7 to 10 a.m. | Monthly gathering at Market Street |
| Saturday, Dec. 5, 2026 | 7 to 10 a.m. per the club; 7 to 11 a.m. per the MCSO Advisory Council | "December Cars and Coffee and Toy Drive" |
The MCSO Advisory Council lists the Dec. 5 morning as "Toy Collection – Scuderia Southwest Cars & Coffee." Neither group has posted a 2026 donation list yet. For its 2025 annual drive, the Council described collecting new, unwrapped toys, bikes, books and games for children of all ages, in support of families in need. It worked with partners including St. Vincent de Paul and MCSO Cadets. Those were the 2025 guidelines. The two listings give different end times for the 2026 event, so arriving early on Dec. 5 covers both.
Breakfast is easy to find. Eggstasy, at 20775 N. Pima Road, Suite Q100, opens at 7 a.m. on Saturdays and serves until 2:30 p.m. Light Heart Coffee opened its Market Street café at 20875 N. Pima Road, #100, in May 2025, Phoenix New Times reported. Its menu lists house-made breakfast at the DC Ranch location from 7 to 11:30 a.m. Monday through Saturday, or until it sells out.
Collector cars and the homes that house them often draw the same buyers. Garages built for a car collection, shaded motor courts and space for a lift come up in more of our conversations than you might expect. If a Saturday on Market Street has you thinking about where your own collection would live, Artie Baxter is happy to talk it through privately. Book an Appointment.
