For the first time in my life, I have walked to the edge of a precipice and taken a step back. As I have noted earlier, I am signed up for the Oregon Porsche Club’s annual NW Passage tour. Last year I did the 1,500 miles in our fifty-year-old 1971 […]

My son Bradley is signed up for this year’s ORPCA (Oregon Region of the Porsche Club of America) Spring NW Passage tour. It’s a five-day, 1,200-mile romp through the Pacific Northwest for 40 cars, with no model year or marque requirements – although most of the cars are late-model Porsches. […]

I recently had the pleasure of joining Alex Porter and the Bring a Trailer team on the BaT Podcast. I covered my automotive history from driving a tractor as a child, to buying my first car for $30 when I turned 16. I talked about some of the cars from […]

Here’s a worthy goal for 2025: Get a couple of driving buddies together and make plans to use your cars. I was recently at the holiday dinner for the local Porsche club, Oregon Region PCA (ORPCA), where organizers announced that they had held 55 driving events last year. In 2025, […]

It’s not the easiest time to think about your old cars. There are competing agendas that include The Nutcracker (my son Bradley is taking me on my birthday, it’s a family tradition) as well as shopping for parents, siblings, children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. New to our living room table […]

It is only through use that the needs of our cars become apparent. Or a recent road trip in the SCM Jaguar E-type V12 coupe, the speedometer stopped working and we could get barely any heat into the car. We also realized that having a passenger-side mirror would make us […]

My son Bradley’s 1982 Collector’s Edition Chevrolet Corvette is going to a new home. It’s being listed on Doug DeMuro’s Cars & Bids site, with an aggressive reserve. The auction can be found here.   Our restoration guru Chip Starr found this car for us at just about the same […]

The SCM 1975 Porsche 911S is just about a usable car. On Thanksgiving Day, my son Bradley and I drove 18 miles to SCM Contributing Editor John Draneas’ house in Wilsonville, OR. This was the first outing in the car since a mid-week tour that revealed deficiencies in the wipers, […]

Old cars are a lot of work. Over the past 24 months, my modern car has required my attention once, when the outside temperatures dropped and caused the tire-pressure warning light to come on. I used my portable inflator to take the tires to 36 psi and I was done. […]

Marionberry milkshakes, pancakes and old cars are a Martin family tradition. The Elderberry Inn is a family-owned restaurant about 50 miles from Portland, and about 25 miles from the Oregon coast. You get there on Highway 26, a scenic, curvy road that crosses the Coast Range, mountains that are really […]