Keith Martin

Last year I put out a call that I was looking for a 1967 Alfa Duetto and got several responses. Just as I was getting ready to pull the trigger, a tidy 1967 Giulia Super showed up on the radar. I couldn’t have both, so I took the four-door (to the delight of my six-year-old)…

The old car scene in Paris is heating up. Last year there were just two auctions in Paris during Rétromobile week: Bonhams and Artcurial. This year there were four, with RM joining the fray, and Artcurial adding an additional auction featuring a collection of Alfa Romeos. Furthermore, the annual SCM reception has grown into a fixture…

Strange things can happen to you at auctions. While shooting new episodes of “What’s My Car Worth” at Barrett-Jackson, one car, of the 1,405 there, caught my eye. Let’s not forget that what defines B-J is the acres and acres of highly polished, overly chromed, customized, raised or slammed, modified and stock American cars. So when I…

This afternoon is a big day. I’m driving the 1958 Sprint Veloce Confortevole (SVC) to Jefferson, Oregon, picking up the Giulia Super and driving both cars back, with the help of Michael Pierce. (I’m sure the Sprint will be a completely different experience from Pierce’s 1967 427/435 Corvette roadster.) Since putting in the new fuel…

The 2014 collector car market has launched. Today all the bidders are gone, and the temporary tents are starting to come down. The trashcans are full of discarded promotional items, bidders’ paddles and parking passes. The busiest guys in Arizona have to be the collector car transporters, as they load thousands of cars for their…

I’m sitting in a pickup truck headed west on Interstate 10, headed to the Pima Air & Space Museum. After a day fawning over the first-rate automobiles at the inaugural Arizona Concours, I expect seeing acres of mothballed F-16s to be something completely different. Just four days ago, I went to the tony Bonhams world…

It’s that time of year, when we start racking up frequent-flyer miles. We’re also buying a few more lottery tickets so that after we win we can put a Gulfstream G650 into the SCM corporate hangar. While we’re at it, we’ll buy a corporate hangar as well. Today I’m headed to London, for a private…

As we wait for the ball to drop in Times Square, it’s a good time to reflect on all the good, bad and insanely stupid things we’ve done in the name of car collecting this past year, and how we might become better collectors in the future. Here are my resolutions. Let’s check back in…