Month: October 2021

Keith’s Blog: A Busy Fall

There once was a time when the automotive calendar went quiet after Monterey Car Week. Not so any longer. In the months of August, September and October, we now have several top-flight but very different events to look forward to and attend. I’ve recently returned from my second time at […]

A Tale of Two Customs

1984 Mazda RX-7 #55358. S/N JM1FB331XE0801486. 17k miles. “1.1-liter 12A rotary, 5-speed manual transmission, Tender Blue Metallic, brown leather upholstery, aftermarket body kit and spoiler, sunroof, AM/FM cassette stereo, air conditioning, dual Weber carburetors, Racing Beat header and exhaust system, 15-inch Weds wheels, Tokico shocks, Eibach springs.” Condition: 1. SOLD […]

“Keefie, Come Wake Up the Camel”

My love affair with Citroëns started 50 years ago in San Francisco. I was 20 years old and in between studying intellectual history at Reed College in Portland and dance at The Juilliard School in New York City. I had decided to spend a few months with my grandmother, Dorel, […]

GT Oh No

Bonhams sold Ferrari 250 GTO #3851GT at its 2014 Quail Lodge auction for $38,115,000, including buyer’s premium. It was a world-record sale — the highest price ever obtained at an auction. One would expect Bonhams’ staff and the seller to be high-fiving after the hammer fell. Instead, the seller sued […]

Set the WABAC

If you’re of the age when new 1960s sports cars were on your bedroom posters, you surely remember Mr. Peabody. A Saturday morning cartoon favorite, this polymath dog and his pet boy, Sherman, used a time-traveling machine called the WABAC to go on entertaining and educational adventures. Because I’m a […]

Rotary Power for the People

The oil crisis of the 1970s frowned heavily on Mazda’s gas-guzzling rotary engines. Under constant development since licensure from NSU in 1961, the enormously expensive rotary-engine program had placed Mazda on the brink of financial ruin. The future looked bleak when Mazda’s largest creditor, Sumitomo Bank, inserted its own corporate […]

Keith’s Blog: Trolls are Trolls, Online or Off

Part of the chatter that surrounds online auctions is the ability of non-certified viewers (“trolls”) to make authoritative comments. I was selling a Mercedes 220 Ponton online one time, and bidding was going along nicely. Suddenly a troll opined, “Do you know the heater boxes on those are lined with […]