Keith Martin has been involved with the collector car hobby for more than 30 years. As a writer, publisher, television commentator and enthusiast, he is constantly on the go, meeting collectors and getting involved in their activities throughout the world. He is the founder and publisher of the monthly Sports Car Market and bi-monthly American Car Collector magazines, has written for the New York Times, Automobile, AutoWeek, Road & Track and other publications, is an emcee for numerous concours, and has his own show, “What’s My Car Worth,” shown on Velocity.
Kids crash cars.
They crash new cars and old cars. They will crash anything they drive.
But how do we expect young kids to grow up with a love for our cranky old cars if we make them wait until they are 25 years old to drive them? By then, if they’ve already had nine years of driving modern cars, then pulling out a choke, pumping a throttle and slipping a clutch are going to be alien, disconcerting concepts.
So Read More
Arizona in January is one of my busiest weeks of the year. The What’s My Car Worth? production crew shoots multiple episodes. I emcee the Arizona Concours d’Elegance. We put on Insider’s Seminars at Gooding & Company and Barrett-Jackson. We host a consignment tour at RM. And we run a week-long subscriptions booth at Gooding. It hardly leaves time to kick tires or visit with friends, but this year I managed to Read More
I’m sitting in Bruce Covill’s 1972 Ferrari 365 GTC/4. It’s my mobile office as I write this blog while on the Arizona Concours d’Elegance Tour. (Covill’s company Cyberitas Technologies, developed the mobile app for the concours, available here.) We’ve just finished a visit to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West.
This marathon began with shooting cars for What’s My Car Worth? Last Thursday and Friday, my co-host Josh Nasar and I drove Read More
Our collector car world has four epicenters, and each has its own anchor event.
The vintage car calendar starts with Monterey in August, followed by Arizona in January, Paris in February and Amelia Island in March.
The signature event for the Monterey Classic Car Week is the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. It follows the auctions, marque shows and historic races. All eyes are on the cars displayed on the 18th Fairway that Sunday.
Five months later, and now nearly upon Read More
2014 is winding down, and it’s been quite a 12 months for SCM and me.
On the magazine side, our page count is up significantly over 2013. We have more subscribers, more advertisers and higher newsstand sales. We’re distributing in bookstores in England, Australia and other countries for the first time, and the results have been great.
The SCM editorial, art, sales and financial team is clicking together like a race engine that is nicely broken in, hitting a healthy Read More
I thought I had my key Christmas gifts all wrapped up. Seven-year-old Bradley is getting a Sphero 2.0 that he can race around the house. Alex will get a visit to trendy clothier Mario’s, with carte blanche in her selection, as long as it costs less than the overdrive rebuild on the 1964 Volvo 1800S.
But this morning there was a pile of notes on my desk. They were from my four-wheeled friends downstairs in the Read More
I’m about to take our 1967 Alfa Romeo Giulia Super over to Guy’s Interior Restorations. The challenge is, how little can I have Guy do to the car?
I just got the Super back from Dan Sommers’ Veloce Motors, with a fresh 2-liter engine installed, new tires, balanced driveshaft and more. The car runs very well.
The interior is good overall, but the tops of the seatbacks have faded from exposure to the sun.
I’m going to have Guy re-dye Read More
I was driving home from a holiday dinner last week on Sauvie’s Island, about 15 miles from downtown Portland. The country road I was on was unlit, two-lane and winding. It was raining, but not heavily.
The road presented no challenges to the modern car I was driving. Cocooned by the touch-screen nav system, the heated seats, automatic climate control and powerful high beams, I motored along above the 45 mph speed limit and didn’t think much about the actual Read More
I was at the Oregon Region Porsche Club holiday dinner recently, and several members came up to talk about my November 11 column, Tips for Car Club Survival, concerning things that car clubs might consider to help them survive and grow as we move deeper into the 21st century.
Our new world is not particularly automobile-friendly, as we have so many options now for entertainment and socialization. How then do we keep old car clubs relevant?
In my column, Read More
There are many stock phrases in the vocabularies of car collectors.
They range from “that’s one of one” to “wonderful patina” to “I never should have sold it.”
The one that seems to get me in the most trouble is, “Well, I’m not really looking, but…”
You know the drill. You have a vague interest in a certain car. In my case, it was a Volvo P1800, the sports coupe Roger Moore drove in the television show “The Saint.”
Not Read More
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