For the past 15 years, I have watched a three-car mini-collection, parked on the street, slowly degrade. The cars all have some interest. They include a 1967 Duetto, a chrome-bumper 914 and a first-generation 1965 Chevrolet Chevelle 300 Deluxe. They were all parked within four blocks of SCM World Headquarters.

All three cars carry current tags, and are drivable. The latter point has now been positively confirmed, as the “collection,” which had sat undisturbed for a few years (as shown in the right-hand image), was recently dispersed around the neighborhood. We surmise this was done because of complaints.

We took the Alfa (non-identical) twins out for their first run together yesterday.  The occasion was the (post) Valentine’s Day Tour organized by Neil d’Autremont for the Alfa Romeo Owners of Oregon.

Wendie and I drove the 1967 GTV, and good friends Michael Cottam and Andrea Allen took our 1965 Giulia Spider Veloce. This was the first outing for the GTV since Guy’s Interior Restorations installed the new interior, provided from Italy, by Matt Jones of Re-Originals. Don’t tell anyone, but we also had Guy install seat heaters and pneumatic lumbar supports.

The Giulia Spider hadn’t been run in a couple of months, and I could sense that it just needed to go out and play for a day.

In the end, it was a choice between walking 12 miles in the snow with my wife and our four-year-old, or just turning around. Here’s how the story unfolded.  

We made a quick trip to Bend, OR, this weekend, to attend an organizational meeting for this September’s Oregon Festival of Cars (formerly the Sun River Festival of Cars). As the fastest way to reach Bend from Portland is to go over Mt. Hood, we thought the 1989 Range Rover Classic would be the perfect ride.

However, Subaru graciously made a 2012 Impreza 2.0i Sport available, with Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive and Vehicle Dynamics Control. It was just a matter of moving Bradley’s car seat and our overnight bags from the Rover to the Impreza, and we were off.

This week’s newsletter is chock-full of information about the upcoming Arizona auctions, and I’m sure I’ll see many of you there. But buying interesting cars (and trucks) is only the beginning of the experience. The next step is to actually use them in the manner in which they were intended, to begin to understand what makes them special in the first place.

Last weekend Alex and I spent Saturday in the mud of Tillamook State Forest, in Oregon, leading a group of four Land Rovers across hill and dale. I haven’t given our 1984 RHD Defender 90 Tdi nearly the seat time I would like to, and relished the opportunity to flog it for the day. With its competition suspension and brutish torque, it was nearly unstoppable.

Facebook followers already know that my day started early on Friday, December 29, with a 5:45 am flight to Denver from Portland. At 11:25 am, I flew back home. Of course, to most of the world this would seem like madness, but just 1,850 miles from achieving coveted “Premiere Executive” status on United, it was a small price to pay for bonus miles, faster upgrades and the like for all of 2012.

It seems to me that jets have become the Greyhound buses of the 21^st century, with constantly full flights, crammed overhead bins, surcharges for nearly everything and constantly rising fares. As a result, the mere notion of waived luggage fees and a nominally bigger seat feels like personally discovering the Holy Grail.

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But the New Year has arrived, and it’s time to talk cars. (Suddenly even the most austere Bug Eye Sprite seems like an upgrade from coach on Frontier.) You’d think that after all these years of buying and selling, some the resolutions described below would be self-evident, but I’ve proven myself a slow learner when it comes to navigating the passion and logic of adding a car to the SCM collection.

Last Thursday marked one more happy year of existence on this planet for me, and unsurprisingly, it put me in a car-shopping mood. I casually posed the question of  what to buy on my Facebook wall and had twenty responses in less than six hours. Here are some of the highlights.

Harvey Briggs recommended an Austin-Healey 3000.

Alex Martin-Banzer recommended a Porsche 911 SC.

James Long recommended a 1960s Mini Cooper S.

Joe Beckner recommended an Alfa Sprint Speciale.