Keith Martin

We’ve got a new car in our condo slot. It’s a 1991 Porsche 928 S4. Yes, a “Stuttgart Corvette,” a.k.a. “piggyback” or “the German Pacer.” I’ll have more to share once we have digested this acquisition, but as the car is still new to me, I am currently basking in the glow of the find…

I recall when we bought our first Land Rover Discovery. We were at a Silver Auction in Portland. My daughter Alexandra was in high school. The Disco had been entered by a local dealer known for the brilliant presentation of his inventory – sometimes referred to as “putting lipstick on a pig.” It was burgundy…

As I am still not able to drive a manual safely (although making progress), I have made it known that I am interested in classic cars with automatics. Consequently, I have done a deep-dive into a world of cars that I have actively disdained over the past few decades. Cars that, if I were walking…

I’m wrestling with the “size” question again. What should a “right-sized” collection look like? And what should the philosophy behind the cars selected be? How many cars is enough? First, with a nod of the head to vintage car events, I would suggest you need two pre-1975 cars, one open and one closed. While some…

The moment is indelibly ingrained in my memory bank. I was on a 140-mile tour around Mt. St. Helens in Washington state. There were 34 of us on the tour, ranging from the SCM 1965 Volvo 122S to a slew of modern big-butt Porsches. We were participating in a Drive Toward a Cure event to…

I continue to tiptoe through the automatically equipped tulips of the collector car world. Due to our ingrained disdain for slushboxes (well-deserved, given the Jurassic technology of the most-often used three-speed Borg Warner 35 tranny), these cars can be bought at a substantial discount from their manual-shift brethren. While my decision to pursue automatics was…

This modern car thing has gotten into my bloodstream. Since July, when our 2004 Mercedes SL 55 AMG arrived, Bradley and I have put nearly 5,000 miles on it – including two trips to Montana. I hate to put this in writing, but so far, the car has behaved perfectly. It had 43,000 miles on…

“Portland has the worst air quality of any city in the world.” That was an Internet headline on Sunday, Sep. 13. Of course, COVID-19 has kept me and Bradley from socializing much since March. Now, the smoke from the wildfires raging on the West Coast forced us to stay indoors. So when a friend in…