Keith Martin

Online auctions have transformed the collector car world. In a matter of minutes — in your own office — you go from contemplating a quiet lunch to posting a $35,000 bid. I was editing the next issue of American Car Collector last Friday when a text message popped up on my phone. “BaT Auction Alert:…

Owners who leave the hoods open on their cars for the entire day are my car-show pet peeve. Two weeks ago, while I was emcee of Keels & Wheels in Texas, I mentioned this to the organizer, Bob Fuller. He said, “It drives me crazy too. I spend all day going around asking people to…

We were traveling at 70 mph in a torrential downpour. Interstate 84, which runs through Oregon’s scenic Columbia River Gorge, was a nightmare of high winds and large pools of standing water. It was not the weather I would have chosen to take Bradley’s 1960 Bugeye Sprite on its inaugural road trip. There comes a…

“We expect to donate $100,000 to charity this year,” Bob Fuller said to me this past weekend at the 22nd Annual Keels & Wheels concours. In its 22 years, Keels & Wheels has raised over $1.6m for various children’s charities, the foremost being Boys and Girls Harbor. According to Glen R. Royal, mayor of Seabrook,…

I’ve owned well over 500 cars during the past 40 years. If I really got serious about counting them, I might reach 1,000. They have ranged from ’62 Nova Wagons to Plymouth Superbirds to Ferrari 330 Americas to BMW Isettas. There wasn’t a car that I couldn’t talk myself into. As Miles Collier noted, my…

I made two round trips to Jefferson, Oregon last week. That’s where “Hooligan Racing,” Bill Gillham’s restoration shop, is located — 63 miles south of Portland. I’ve been taking Alfas to Gillham for over 30 years, my first being the ex-Ivan Zaremba 1967 Duetto owned by my college friend Arthur Levy. When Arthur was deciding on a car to drive from…

I’ve bought and sold a lot of cars over the years. They tended to come in bunches. There was an MG period, then a Porsche period, then a Rover period and so on. Some more-disciplined collectors have a linear approach. For example, having one car of each year of Corvette production. That’s never appealed to…

If location, location, location is the mantra for real estate, it’s the location, the cars and the people for car shows. Seven years ago, when I was emcee at my first La Jolla concours, the show was called the La Jolla Motorcar Classic. It was a good event at that time, but it wasn’t quite…

On April 3, 1958 my Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint Veloce rolled off the assembly line. Six days later it was sold to a dealer in Switzerland. Its history is lost from then until about 30 years ago when it was found sitting, not running and with the nose punched in, at the side of the…

Take a moment right now and nominate people you know who are enthusiastic about old cars — and under 40 years of age. Nominations close April 15, and we will feature the results in SCM’s October issue. Nominees can be involved in any aspect of the old car world — from buying, selling, detailing, repairing,…