At a certain point during my recovery from my stroke, I decided to look for classic cars with automatic transmissions. While universally loathed by enthusiasts — including me — I hoped that maybe I was just overlooking what might be a decent motoring experience. I bought two automatics. The first […]
Last week I asked you to pick four cars for a $500,000 collection. Your many and diverse answers can be seen below this blog. This week I’ll tell you what my three-car collection would be, and why. I’m not setting a price boundary for myself, as market value has nothing […]
We filled the tank of our 2004 Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG for the first time on July 1, 2020. The odometer read 45,389 miles. We had purchased it from a collector in the Los Angeles area for $22,500. SCM Contributor Philip Richter had urged — no, commanded — me to buy […]
We do this exercise every so often. I offer a target and you start throwing darts. We played the original version on an SCM tour bus headed to the vintage Monaco GP. I think our target then was $25,000. Times have changed. Here’s today’s challenge: Tell us your four-car collection […]
There’s been plenty of discussion about how Bring a Trailer has changed the world of collecting. The simplest example goes back to the early days of SCM. When we wrote about a Ferrari Dino selling at Barrett-Jackson, the magazine was the only place that sale would be covered in any […]
SCM Editor-In-Chief Jeff Sabatini recently took our 2006 Lotus Elise in for its every-two-years emission testing. We expected it would be routine, as it powered by a modern (by our standards) Toyota engine. It failed. But not because of emissions issues. On the printout we got from the Oregon Department […]
Any show or club meeting is just an excuse for like-minded people to come together. You might bump into me at the next meeting of the Portland Aquarium society looking for some long-finned zebra danios. Or at the Oregon Reptile Show where I got our last three crested geckos. If […]
My relationship with the Monterey Peninsula started in the late 1960s. I was a wrench (that was before the term “technician” came into vogue) on Hilary Luginbuhl’s SCCA F-production Alfa Romeo Giulietta race car, aka Rubber Chicken Racing. There was fierce competition in our class against the factory-backed cars, the […]
The Oregon Festival of Cars is coming up next weekend. The brainchild of SCM’s Legal Files contributor John Draneas, it’s a relaxed way to spend a weekend in Bend, OR, looking at old cars and chatting with friends. It also marks the unofficial end of “car season” in our area. […]
This year we made the decision to drive to Monterey from Portland, about 750 miles each way. In previous decades, we had flown to San Jose, CA, picked up a rental car and driven to the peninsula, repeating the process for the trip home. Door to door, it would take […]
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