Legal Files

Sidestepping the Broker

This month’s “Legal Files” concerns a recent situation in which a friend bought a car that was listed in an online auction. Except that “Bob” didn’t win the auction; he wound up as the underbidder. The high bidder did not meet the seller’s reserve, however, and the auction was a […]

Your Registration is Canceled

One of the hot segments of the collector-car market is Japanese domestic market (JDM) vehicles. Previously not exported to the U.S., the popularity of JDM vehicles was spurred when the federal government relaxed import requirements for vehicles over 25 years old. A subset of the JDM category are “kei cars,” […]

What If CARFAX Got It Wrong?

SCM Publisher Martin stoked a lot of interest with his May 2021 “Shifting Gears” column that explained how important CARFAX has become to the collector-car market. We printed excellent letters from Donald Davret and David Preston concerning CARFAX and potential errors in its reports in the July 2021 issue. Subsequently, […]

Last Call for the Cunningham Corvette

The #1 Briggs Cunningham Chevrolet Corvette, raced by the Cunningham team in the 1960 24 Hours of Le Mans, sold for $758,500 at RM Sotheby’s Amelia Island, Florida, auction in May. The result was a bit of a disappointment, given the pre-auction estimate of $900,000 to $1.3 million, but the […]

Home Court Advantage

The world has gotten a lot smaller these days. Say you search the internet and find a nice-looking, numbers-matching 1964 Porsche 356SC advertised by a dealer 2,000 miles away. The car looks great, all the right boxes are checked, and there are 85 pictures of every nook and cranny. You […]

The Lost and Found Ferrari

The latest stolen-supercar story hit the news recently when U.S. Customs and Border Protection intercepted a stolen Ferrari F50 on December 14, 2019, at the Peace Bridge Port of Entry in Buffalo, NY. Alert CBP officers noticed that some of the rivets on the dashboard VIN plate were covered in […]

Will Your Replica Be Destroyed?

The collector-car world was recently stunned by the news that a Swedish court awarded judgment to Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) in its copyright infringement case against Karl and Ann-Christine Magnusson. The court ruled that the Magnussons, who were in the process of building a C-type replica, had violated JLR’s copyright […]

Unfinished Business

The October 2020 “Legal Files,” co-authored with Prescott Kelly, reported about a lawsuit filed against Coys of Kensington involving a 1973 Porsche Carrera RS. That lawsuit seems to be the tip of a large iceberg. Once again, we want to point out that the previous Coys, owned by Chris Routledge, […]

Salvage-Title Ferrari: Bargain or a Bad Deal?

Recently, SCMer Bruce Cochran wrote me with an interesting suggestion: “I thought this particular listing for a Ferrari F12 might be of possible interest for a future dissertation. Without knowing anything about ‘salvage titles,’ my first instinct has always been to run in the other direction. My assumption has always […]

Is This a Ferrari TdF — or Something Else?

My interest was immediately aroused when I saw this in my inbox, a letter on which I had been cc’ed, from a renowned Ferrari expert and historian:  Attn. Mr. Rod Egan, Worldwide Auctioneers: I have been reading the January 2021 issue of Sports Car Market magazine and saw the Worldwide […]