Keith Martin

Here’s my New Year’s Resolution for my driving my old cars: Dry days only from now on. I once prided myself on taking my cars out in any weather, day or night. “They were just cars,” I said. And to paraphrase collector and concours judge Ed Gilbertson, “Cars are meant to be driven.” They won’t…

This past week, we’ve been blessed with bright sunny weather in Oregon. I’ve taken advantage of this by taking the SCM 1991 S4 928 auto out for a couple of runs from downtown Portland to Astoria on the Oregon coast and back. Every exotic car speaks its own language. It dares you to understand it…

I came close to making an offer on a Sunbeam Tiger last week. For the past couple of years, I have been forced to look away from manual-shift cars and toward automatics. As the number of sports car fanatics looking for two-pedal classic cars is somewhere between zero and one – that one being me…

Here is the note I just sent to Barbara Grayson at Consolidated Autoworks. That’s the shop that has ministered to our 1971 Jag V12 2+2 since it arrived in April. Dear Barb: I have now put 1,700 wonderful miles on the Jag since it arrived 8 months ago. Bradley and I drove it to Astoria…

Our modern supercar expert, Philip Richter, has been waxing enthusiastic about his 2008 Audi R8. With a gated six-speed gearbox and 4.2L V8, he traded his AMG SL 55 for it. I accept his enthusiasm and endorsement of the car. He just pointed me at a 20,000-mile V8 with an SMG that sold on BaT…

One afternoon in the early 1990s, we were on a Sunday drive to Mt. Hood in our Mercedes W123 240D automatic. Alex was just a couple of months old. We stopped at Merit Realty in a small strip-mall in Welches, and I asked the agent, “What do you folks sell up here, anyway?” “Forest Service…

I saw this question posted on the FB site of Avants – Drive Everything. Avants is a free-wheeling membership group that exults in the fun of being behind the wheel of anything! It’s the brainchild of Adam Cramer. If you have any gearhead in your DNA it is worth exploring. Prodded by this question, I…

I am planning for May of 2022. Bradley will get his permit then, when he turns 15. I have been plotting what kind of road trip we might take to celebrate this occasion. And what we might drive. Fortunately for his and my sanity, I have long-ago abandoned the notion that we would drive across…