The first Pikes Peak Hill Climb was promoted by Spencer Penrose, who had converted the narrow carriage road into the Pikes Peak Highway. The inaugural Penrose Trophy was awarded in 1916 to Rea Lentz with a time of 20:55.60. In 1929 a popular stock car class was added to the event. Following World War Two, Louis Unser dominated the postwar years, winning three more times between 1946 and 1970. During this period the event was part of the AAA and USAC IndyCar championship, and from 1953 the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) sponsored the event, bringing an influx of sports cars. Bobby Unser, nephew of Louis, set course records almost every year from 1953 to 1962, the most sustained streak of record-breaking in the event's history.
European teams began competing at Pikes Peak in 1984, when Norwegian rallycross driver Martin Schanche and French rally driver Michèle Mouton (Audi Sport quattro) arrived together. Mouton achieved the overall victory and course record of 11:25.39 the following year in 1985. In 1987, Walter Röhrl won the overall race and set a new record of 10:47.85 in the Audi Sport quattro S1 Pikes Peak. Finnish World Rally Champion Ari Vatanen then won the event in 1988 in a record-breaking time of 10 minutes and 47 seconds in his turbocharged Peugeot 405 Turbo 16, an effort captured in the acclaimed short film Climb Dance directed by Jean-Louis Mourey.
The City of Colorado Springs began paving the highway in 2002 following a lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club over erosion damage caused by 1.5 million tons of road gravel deposited over the decades. Approximately 10% of the route was paved each year. The 2011 event was the last race with any dirt sections, and 2012 became the first fully paved running. Japanese driver Nobuhiro Tajima won six overall victories between 2006 and 2011 during this transitional era, setting a course record in 2011 that was the first to break the 10-minute barrier.
The first all-asphalt race in 2012 saw the overall record broken multiple times, with Rhys Millen — son of former event winner Rod Millen — setting the final mark in the Time Attack Division. In 2013, WRC legend Sébastien Loeb shattered the nine-minute barrier in a Peugeot 208 T16 Pikes Peak with a time of 8:13.878, beating Rhys Millen's then-record by over 44 seconds.
Electric cars competed sporadically at Pikes Peak from the early 1980s onward. The watershed moment came at the 2018 event, when Frenchman Romain Dumas set a new overall course record of 7:57.148 in the all-electric Volkswagen I.D. R, breaking the 8-minute barrier for the first time and beating Loeb's standing record by more than 15 seconds. The shift toward electric machinery was progressive: in 2015 electric cars placed first and second overall, and by 2018 they held the outright record they have retained since.
Motorcycle racing at Pikes Peak dates to the inaugural event in 1916, when Floyd Clymer won the motorcycle class riding a British Excelsior. However, motorcycles only featured in select years — 1916, 1954–1955, 1971–1976, and 1980–1982 — due to dangerous mass-start conditions that caused visibility problems. Motorcycle racing became an established, regularly run part of the event from 1991 onward after a staggered wave-start format improved safety. The 2012 event saw the first motorcycle to break the 10-minute mark, set by Carlin Dunne on a Ducati Multistrada. Motorcycle racing at Pikes Peak came to a tragic end in 2019 when Dunne, a four-time overall motorcycle winner, was killed in a crash less than a quarter of a mile from the finish line while riding a prototype Ducati Streetfighter V4. Following review after the 2021 event, motorcycle competition was subsequently discontinued.
The PPIHC historically accommodated a vast range of vehicles, from open-wheelers and sports cars to rally cars and trucks. Current divisions include the Unlimited class (for any vehicle passing safety inspection, home to the most exotic purpose-built machinery), Time Attack 1 (production-based two- and four-wheel drive vehicles), the Porsche Pikes Peak Trophy by Yokohama (one-make Cayman GT4 Clubsport category introduced in 2018), Open Wheel (traditional single-seaters), Pikes Peak Open (production-based vehicles with unlimited modifications), and an Exhibition Class for vehicles demonstrating technological advancement outside formal specifications.
The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is self-sanctioned and operated by the Pikes Peak Auto Hill Climb Educational Museum. Its current overall record of 7:57.148 (set by Romain Dumas in 2018 in the Volkswagen I.D. R) stands as the benchmark for all-out speed at altitude. The race has drawn motorcycle, car, and truck competitors from every continent, and its unique combination of extreme altitude, technical complexity, and open-road danger gives it a character unlike any other event in motorsport. The shift to full asphalt running after 2011 fundamentally changed the competitive landscape, enabling modern purpose-built unlimited machinery to target sub-8-minute times that were unimaginable in the gravel era.