Every week, we send out the “SCM Insider” email, chock full of breaking news, auction results, select videos, and a reader poll to more than 30,000 rabid collectors like you. Our question in the June 30 newsletter asked readers to choose one of four outcomes for the 2009 Monterey weekend. […]
Author: Keith Martin
Assisted Suicide, Clunker Style
Over the next few months, nearly 750,000 clunkers are going to be scrapped. Not dismantled, mind you, but smashed and melted into their base, formative materials. Whether or not this is good government policy we’ll leave to our friends at The Economist. And others can debate the relative environmental effects; […]
Pebble Beach, 2020
Each year, we call this our “Pebble Beach” issue. We wrap it up about one month before the Monterey week, and through the coordination of our printer and the trucking companies, copies magically appear at nearly every Monterey venue, from the Lodge at Pebble Beach to Concorso Italiano. By its […]
Predilections and Predictions
July is an oddly quiet month in the collector car world. While there are auctions going on, vintage car shamans are still picking apart the results of the RM Maranello ($28.4m), Bonhams Monaco ($6.2m), and Mecum Indy ($33.6m) sales. And through those results, they are attempting to cast their stones […]
Something Old, Something New
It’s been nearly ten years since I last drove in the California Mille. Dodge was the primary sponsor then, and I enjoyed the Northern California countryside from behind the wheel of a Viper. After growing up driving Alfas, with their puny 4-cylinder, 80-ci engines, mashing the throttle on a 450-horsepower, […]
From Occupation to Recreation
The Grays Harbor Indoor Professional Rodeo is a three-day event, and includes Bronc Riding, Bull Riding, Calf Roping, Breakaway Roping, Steer Wrestling, Team Roping, Barrel Racing, and more. My wife’s father has a race-engine shop outside Elma, Washington, where the rodeo is held. Located between Olympia and Aberdeen in central-western […]
Far From the Madding Crowd
I propose we take a break from the constant bric-a-brac of the market. At least for a few days, let’s transport ourselves back to a simpler era, when the fundamental question wasn’t how much your motorcar was worth, but whether it could actually travel 60 miles without breaking down. In […]
The New Market
Since the end of the Scottsdale auctions, the flow of emails, letters, and phone calls has been relentless. Half are shrill diatribes, demanding that SCM support the market. Any description of prices as falling, or buyers being cautious, is viewed as sabotaging the market. The second half contends that SCM […]
One Fine Day
Sometimes you just need a break. So last Saturday, we pulled out the 1965 Alfa Giulia Spider Veloce and the 2000 Boxster S. SCM Legal Analyst John Draneas and wife Carlyn fired up their Lotus Elise (or would have had it actually started; more about that later), and CM Contributor […]
“As on a Darkling Plain.”
If ever we needed a respite from being pummeled by bad news, it is now. Scarcely a day goes by without a headline about an investment firm failing, a newspaper declaring bankruptcy, or a car company down to its last few billion dollars. The Dow continues to swing unpredictably like […]