Something Old, Something New

Woodard bids farewell to his airsucker

Monterey is the focus of this issue, with over 200 cars described in detail by our crack team of analysts. If you were there, you saw them going from car to car, diligently noting details like panel fit, paint quality and interior condition. The team this year was made up of Dave Kinney, Donald Osborne, Carl Bomstead, Nathan York, and Trevor and Jeff Clinard. You already know the weekend was a collector car love fest, with $79m in Benjamins making the journey from one wallet to another during the five days of sales. The auction companies nicked their little piece of booty from the proceeds, which is what keeps those catalogs coming. The most-often asked question of the weekend was, “Are we on the bubble?” The simple answer, to use one of the favorite phrases of our legal expert John Draneas, is, “Yes and no.” We at SCM have long maintained that the blue-chip collectibles will continue to rise. Cars that embody historical significance, beauty, rarity and performance, like the Ferrari SWB, the Mercedes Gullwing and the Maserati 5000 GT, are fixed in numbers, yet being sought after by a growing number of sophisticated, wealthy collectors. So invest at will in the honored models of honored marques. On the other hand, garden-variety muscle cars, especially relatively unattractive full-sized sedans like Dodge Coronets or late-model Chargers, along with all types of clones, are starting to soften. If you’re late to the muscle car party, our advice is to buy something like a ’67-’69 Camaro in excellent condition, with a matching numbers V8 drivetrain, and enjoy the ride. You’ll have $30,000-$40,000 tied up, and you’ll be able to get your money back without breaking a sweat. But if you pay $100,000 for a made-up, fakey-doo Hemi ’Cuda convertible, you should be prepared to own the car for a long time, whether you want to or not.

THE SCM SC

It’s funny how a short list can get just a bit longer when the right car comes along. A few issues back, I mentioned that I thought a 1965-68 SWB 911 should be a part of the SCM collection. Despite our Porsche expert Jim Schrager’s protestations, I wasn’t about to consider any other offering from Stuttgart. 356s were just too vintage, and later Porsches, such as the 1978-83 SC, were far too modern. Give me a car with an anemic 2.0-liter engine and a twitchy chassis any day, I proclaimed. That is, until good friend Bill Woodard pulled up at the SCM world headquarters in his Guard’s Red 1978 SC sunroof coupe. And worse, told me it was for sale. Woodard and I have owned a variety of cars together over the years, from a Lancia Flaminia Zagato to a Healey 3000. But he had kept the Porsche all to himself. He found it in Vancouver, WA, last year, letting the allure of its shiny original paint overcome his trepidation about the 177,000 miles on the odometer. He took the car to his winter home in St. George, UT, and made a near-career out of sourcing and installing all the various little bits a car can need when it is nearing 30 years of age, including front hood struts, rear shocks and the like. We agreed on a price of $12,000. SCM contributor Steve Serio remarked that while this was full retail for a car with this many miles, you could easily pay more than this and get a car with a lot of needs. As with many high-volume sports cars (35,607 SCs were built) the market price is all about condition and deferred maintenance. Woodard is a meticulous owner, so I figured he had already done all the little stuff that can drive you crazy. I’ll find out if I was right.

SOLSTICE

I recently spent a day behind the wheel of a thoroughly modern car, the Pontiac Solstice. It’s no secret that GM Vice President and long-time SCMer, Bob Lutz, has long wanted to build a nimble, well-balanced four-cylinder sports car, in the mold of the first BMW Z3s. It’s also no secret that many of the new GM products, like the G6 and GTO, while technically competent, hardly have styling that gets your pulse pounding. The Solstice succeeds in nearly every way. First of all, with a starting price of $19,995 and a fully-loaded sticker in the $26,000 range, the Solstice represents that most American of automotive virtues, lots of car for the dollar. It’s sized right as well, looking and feeling much larger than a Miata. While no one will ever accuse the car of being over-powered, neither is it lacking. Getting to speed and keeping it there through traffic and along winding roads requires frequent use of the gearbox—a good thing, as the shift linkage is easily the best on any American car I have driven. While the gearing of the “fuel-mileage” fifth gear is unfortunately a big jump from fourth, the lower gears are nicely spaced. Perhaps the biggest contributors to the superior handling of the car are its generously sized 245/45R tires on flashy 18” rims. Not only do they give the car a thoroughly modern look, they provide a contact patch that was essentially impossible to break—and I tried, at triple digit speeds. I have a few niggling complaints, chief among them just how messy the engine bay looks. I’d like to take all the GM powerplant designers and have them spend a day looking under the hoods (or through the rear decks) of a selection of new and vintage Ferraris, including an Enzo, a Modena 360, a TdF and even a lowly 250 GTE. For some reason, Americans just go into ugly wire hell when it comes to engine bays. Even exotics like the Ford GT, festooned with bar code stickers that look like they belong on a Wal-Mart close-out table, aren’t immune. Can making the mechanical heart of the car have some visual sizzle really be that difficult? For the price the Solstice is, all in all, the best two-seat sports car ever produced in America. We’re planning on having one here for a six-month test, along with a new Miata, and will be putting them into service alongside the members of the SCM vintage fleet. We look forward to sharing our discoveries with you.

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