It costs real money to turn a classic car into a fun driver. Our 1965 Volvo 122S was a case in point. It was a decent car, but it still needed nearly $10,000 spent on it before it was enjoyable to take down the road.   With any old car […]

One moment, the 1971 Jaguar V12 coupe was hustling along at 70 mph on Highway 26, heading back to Portland after a satisfying lunch of fresh-caught rockfish at the South Bay Wild Fish House in Astoria, OR. The next, it was sitting silently, hood-up, by the side of the road. […]

For $21,000, someone has become the new owner of the SCM Volvo 122S. Our friends at Avant-Garde Collection listed it for us on Bring a Trailer. “Being an automatic really held it back. If it had been a stick with overdrive it would easily have brought another $10,000,” said the […]

When Keith offered up the U-boat for the 450-mile roundtrip to southern Oregon I had planned for the weekend, I did not hesitate to answer affirmatively. Being “between” cars myself, the opportunity to drive the SCM Porsche 928 rather than my wife’s diesel VW Jetta daily driver instantly transformed the […]

We are gearing up for our annual Caravan to Concorso. Run “cowboy-style” as tribute to Martin Swig’s love of irreverent motoring, we know only a few things for sure. Everyone is welcome, but sports cars are preferred. There are no entry fees or route books. You’ll get an SCM hat […]

I’ve been driving sports cars on Marmot Road since 1969. That was the year I moved from San Francisco to Portland to attend Reed College. Over the past decades, I’ve discovered a variety of ways to go from my home, loop around Mt. Hood and return. I’ve driven my “Circuit […]

I took the SCM 2004 Mercedes AMG SL 55 out for a 100-mile drive through the Oregon wine country last Saturday. It was a glorious early-spring sunny day. I spent most of the time with the top down. The most attractive feature of this 500-hp machine continues to be its […]

We are currently planning our annual informal tour down the coasts of Oregon and California to Monterey. Anyone is welcome to join, although cars with at least a pretension of sportiness are preferred. Event stickers and SCM hats will be provided. At the moment, our plans call for me to […]

Producing “The Best of Shifting Gears, Volume 1” and “The Best of Legal Files” has turned out to be a more formidable task that we imagined. But the books are finally printed and in the mail. Through the yeoman efforts of designer Jodi Ellis, print coordinator Matthew Strauss and editor […]

It was a brilliant winter afternoon. The SCM 1991 928 S4, dark blue with blue leather, was slicing through the turns on Washington State Highway 14. It’s a two-lane road that follows the northern side of the Columbia Gorge. The road is vastly more interesting than the four-lane Interstate 84 […]