Keith Martin

It’s time we all stopped pretending. For all intents and purposes, the last collectible serial production car rolled off the assembly line sometime in the mid-1970s.SCM has long maintained that the 1955-73 period will be regarded as the Golden Age of collectible cars, when the automotive equivalents of Van Gogh, Puccini and Frank Lloyd Wright…

The 1974 Mustang II, by nearly any standard, was a pathetic shadow of the original. It was also a terrific sales success, its 384,000 units sold far outstripping the 134,267 of the 1973, final-year, “Big Mustang.”The reason Mustang IIs flew out of the showroom was simple. Gas prices zoomed as a result of the 1973…

While I’ve never been to a 24-hour race, the Speed Channel coverage of the 2005 Barrett-Jackson auction came close. Although my duties in the broadcast booth were spread over four days, that’s a lot of hours to put in watching the world’s shiniest used car lot in action.Bob Varsha and Brock Yates, my boothmates, were…

I celebrated a birthday recently, which was marked in part by an obligatory journey to the local DMV to get my license renewed. The good news was that I weigh nearly 30 pounds less than I did eight years ago when I last renewed, thanks to my daily before-dawn five-mile run. The bad news is…

We don’t do things halfway here at SCM. I’ll offer as proof my first muscle car purchase: A 1970 Plymouth Superbird, Vitamin C orange with a black vinyl interior.The year was 1989, and the following advertisement appeared on the front page of the local Autotrader: “1970 Superbird, 29,000 original miles, 4-speed, 440-4bbl, bench seat, window…

I’m going to blame this one on Ed Welburn, General Motors design chief. The two of us were kicking tires at the RM Amelia Island auction last March, and came across a 1966 Sting Ray coupe. Welburn mentioned that it was nearly exactly what he wanted, a car in driving condition with a small-block.“But it…

Imagine a car collection to be like a well-stocked wine cellar, with each flight contributing its own particular palate, body and boquet. During the past few months, I’ve had the opportunity to drink deeply from three quite different appellations, that of the Ford GT, the Alfa Romeo Giulietta and the Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing.I was just…

The SCM E-type has come and gone, but its brief time with us was memorable.White with black leather, it was a 1967 4.2-liter Series I coupe. My co-conspirator in this latest adventure was Dave Stewart, of Aurora, OR, whom I met when he attended an SCM Insider’s Seminar at Barrett-Jackson some years ago. (At that…

Austin-Healey was really a one-trick pony, a company that produced a single design and a few variations on that theme. From the first svelte, unadorned 100-4, with its graunchy three-speed gearbox and fold-down windshield, to the final ornate and luxurious BJ8, all the models we now call Big Healeys shared the same basic look. But…