Chances are good that you are preparing for the Scottsdale five-ring circus while you’re reading this. You’ve pored over the SCM Arizona supplement and used the digital edition to instantly link to the auction company web sites.You’ve probably hooked up with a transport company, insurance company and even a finance […]
The weekend was fast and long, with me flying to Kissimmee and back in the span of just a few days. It was my first time attending Mecum’s mammoth Florida auction. With over 2,000 cars on offer, I’d liken the experience to wrestling with a porcupine – there was no way I was walking away without something to show for it.
The American Car Collector editorial gang has insisted loudly that the magazine needs its own swagger-worthy set of wheels, and I had a feeling Mecum would be the place that it would happen. When I glimpsed the 1963 Dodge 440 with built 700-hp Hemi, tubbed wheelwells and roll cage built to 9.9-second regulation, I was barely able to calculate my maximum bid before the red mist set in.
Another Arizona Auction Week has come and gone in a whirlwind. In addition to the SCM gang hosting another wildly successful Corvette seminar, consignment tours at RM and Gooding for Platinum subscribers, booths at Gooding, Russo and Silver, we managed to attend every auction and pretty much every after-hours gala event.
The What’s My Car Worth? production team had two film crews working simultaneously to keep Donald Osborne and me perpetually evaluating cars. We looked at 16 cars total, and test drove 14, including a 1955 Ferrari 250 GT Europa, a 1968 Aston Martin DB6 Vantage and, of course, Herbie, the 1963 VW “Love Bug” Beetle.
And now it’s on to Kissimmee, for Mecum’s annual mega-auction. I’ll be doing a meet-and-greet there on Saturday, January 28 at 2pm. RSVP by Wednesday if you’ll be attending. See you there!
Alex and I took the Boxster S out for a delightful, top-down drive a week ago. Despite 40-degree weather, the interior space was cozy, thanks to a factory windblocker between the roll hoops, windows rolled up, heated seats and a prodigious heater.
We went out along the Sandy River, through a variety of backroads towards Mt. Hood, and ended up at the Zigzag Inn – where I’ve been taking Alex since she was in a bassinette. The S once again impressed me with its combination of effortless power and comfort – but not, alas, enough to make it a permanent keeper.
This week’s newsletter is chock-full of information about the upcoming Arizona auctions, and I’m sure I’ll see many of you there. But buying interesting cars (and trucks) is only the beginning of the experience. The next step is to actually use them in the manner in which they were intended, to begin to understand what makes them special in the first place.
Last weekend Alex and I spent Saturday in the mud of Tillamook State Forest, in Oregon, leading a group of four Land Rovers across hill and dale. I haven’t given our 1984 RHD Defender 90 Tdi nearly the seat time I would like to, and relished the opportunity to flog it for the day. With its competition suspension and brutish torque, it was nearly unstoppable.
“I’ve never owned a collector car, and I’d like to get into the hobby. How should I start?” It’s a question we hear often. The path to collector car happiness is relatively straightforward; regular readers of SCM are familiar with our maxims. But this, our first issue of the […]
Facebook followers already know that my day started early on Friday, December 29, with a 5:45 am flight to Denver from Portland. At 11:25 am, I flew back home. Of course, to most of the world this would seem like madness, but just 1,850 miles from achieving coveted “Premiere Executive” status on United, it was a small price to pay for bonus miles, faster upgrades and the like for all of 2012.
It seems to me that jets have become the Greyhound buses of the 21st century, with constantly full flights, crammed overhead bins, surcharges for nearly everything and constantly rising fares. As a result, the mere notion of waived luggage fees and a nominally bigger seat feels like personally discovering the Holy Grail.
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But the New Year has arrived, and it’s time to talk cars. (Suddenly even the most austere Bug Eye Sprite seems like an upgrade from coach on Frontier.) You’d think that after all these years of buying and selling, some the resolutions described below would be self-evident, but I’ve proven myself a slow learner when it comes to navigating the passion and logic of adding a car to the SCM collection.
Last Thursday marked one more happy year of existence on this planet for me, and unsurprisingly, it put me in a car-shopping mood. I casually posed the question of what to buy on my Facebook wall and had twenty responses in less than six hours. Here are some of the highlights.
Harvey Briggs recommended an Austin-Healey 3000.
Alex Martin-Banzer recommended a Porsche 911 SC.
James Long recommended a 1960s Mini Cooper S.
Joe Beckner recommended an Alfa Sprint Speciale.
As SCM readers are keenly aware, the key to buying any old car is turning the process into an adventure. I knew that picking up the newly purchased 1973 Volvo 1800 ES with four-year-old Bradley would have to be full of first-times if I wanted the experience to compare with fresh and visceral memories of Disneyland, whence we had just returned. (We rode every thrill ride his 43” height would allow, including the Hollywood Tower, where he remarked in the plummeting elevator, “Gee, Dad, those ghosts don’t look very real,” and the Matterhorn—“I didn’t know snow monsters had red eyes”—as I struggled to keep from tossing my cookies.)
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It’s Road Trip Time
It’s time for my annual fly-and-buy road trip with my daughter, Alex. She’s returning home for Christmas break after a semester studying marketing and business management in Grenoble, France, and she’s already asking what we’re going to buy this year.
Last year I was on the hunt for a Range Rover to use for our “civilized” off-roading; the crude part was served by our Series III rig (which has since gone to Colin Comer’s father – I know, if Colin REALLY loved his dad why would he stick him in a mobile Waring Blender?). The SIII was replaced by our turbo-diesel D90.
SCMer Jeffrey Stout of Manhattan Beach contacted me, and I was immediately seduced by his 1989 Range Rover Classic – in fact he had even taken Sir Stirling Moss for a ride in it (presumably not off-road). Alex and I flew down and drove it back to Portland, where it has become a much-beloved member of the SCM stable.
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