Keith Martin

I’ve pursued a two-tiered approach to my changing tastes in cars. On the one hand, I have realized that there are fully depreciated late-model exotics, usually less than 20 years old, that offer tremendous values. These are cars that have been owned by collectors, are in excellent condition and have anywhere from 25,000 to 50,000…

I spent the first 68 years of my life treating sports cars with automatic transmissions disdainfully. At any club meet or cars and coffee, the first thing I looked at when I walked down a row of cars were the center consoles. If I saw a gear-shift lever and a shifter boot, I knew I…

I’ve driven and raced a variety of Porsches over the years. I’ve put significant miles on a 356 Convertible D, raced a 2.7 Carrera with MFI twice in the Modena Cento Ore, took our Boxster S on two 1,000-mile Oregon Porsche club tours, piloted a 1968 911 L on the 800-mile Oregon Alfa club Northwest…

I feel like someone who keeps trying to lose weight and does just fine until another cream-filled doughnut comes along. In the past two years, I have sold a few cars and acquired a few more. You’d think someone who spends idle evenings cross-referencing odds on sports betting sites — tallying spreads, tracking lines, obsessing…

Here’s my New Year’s Resolution for my driving my old cars: Dry days only from now on. I once prided myself on taking my cars out in any weather, day or night. “They were just cars,” I said. And to paraphrase collector and concours judge Ed Gilbertson, “Cars are meant to be driven.” They won’t…

This past week, we’ve been blessed with bright sunny weather in Oregon. I’ve taken advantage of this by taking the SCM 1991 S4 928 auto out for a couple of runs from downtown Portland to Astoria on the Oregon coast and back. Every exotic car speaks its own language. It dares you to understand it…

I came close to making an offer on a Sunbeam Tiger last week. For the past couple of years, I have been forced to look away from manual-shift cars and toward automatics. As the number of sports car fanatics looking for two-pedal classic cars is somewhere between zero and one – that one being me…

Here is the note I just sent to Barbara Grayson at Consolidated Autoworks. That’s the shop that has ministered to our 1971 Jag V12 2+2 since it arrived in April. Dear Barb: I have now put 1,700 wonderful miles on the Jag since it arrived 8 months ago. Bradley and I drove it to Astoria…

Our modern supercar expert, Philip Richter, has been waxing enthusiastic about his 2008 Audi R8. With a gated six-speed gearbox and 4.2L V8, he traded his AMG SL 55 for it. I accept his enthusiasm and endorsement of the car. He just pointed me at a 20,000-mile V8 with an SMG that sold on BaT…

One afternoon in the early 1990s, we were on a Sunday drive to Mt. Hood in our Mercedes W123 240D automatic. Alex was just a couple of months old. We stopped at Merit Realty in a small strip-mall in Welches, and I asked the agent, “What do you folks sell up here, anyway?” “Forest Service…