Keith Martin

I’m in one of the conference rooms at LeMay — America’s Car Museum, waiting for a meeting of the marketing committee of the Board of Trustees, of which I am a member. I’ve been involved with the museum in a variety of ways since its first public meetings over a decade ago. It has been…

The Monday after Monterey Classic Car Week feels like a ceasefire. During the previous five days, over $300m cars had been hammered sold – and those are only the public transactions. (We’ll have complete coverage in the next issue of Sports Car Market.) But on Monday, all was quiet. Our favorite breakfast place in Carmel,…

The Monday after Classic Car Week in Monterey is strangely quiet. No herds of Lamborghini  Aventadors pushing their way through traffic. All the real Cobras are gone; you know if you see one today it’s a Tupperware special. I’m staying on through Thursday, to participate in the BMW CCA annual convention, Oktoberfest. Wendie drove our…

It was over a year ago that we persuaded SCMer Ned Scudder to part with his beloved Turkis-colored 1972 2002 tii. And on Wednesday, Wendie is planning to drive it from Portland to Monterey. But the path from acquisition to “in service” hasn’t been easy or short. The car was fundamentally sound, with a fresh…

In all the years I’ve had Alfas, I’ve never driven one to a National Convention held anywhere other than Portland. When it was announced that this years’ convention would be in Santa Rosa, CA  (55 miles north of San Francisco), I thought about going. When I was asked to be the emcee of the Concorso…

The 2013 edition of the local Porsche Club tour, Northwest Passage, took place this past weekend. SCM, Chubb Collector Car Insurance and Sunset Porsche-Audi were the sponsors. We invited two good friends from L.A., Mark Berns and Jaime Gesundheit, to join us and offered them our 1967 GTV. As they are both deeply immersed in…

One of my favorite sounds this time of year is the door to the SCM under-office garage opening and closing. Most often, it means that one of the SCM cars is either heading to the shop or returning, getting ready for the tours ahead. For instance, this morning Subscriptions Manager Rich Coparanis drove the 1965…

I’ve been involved with LeMay — America’s Car Museum in a variety of ways over the past decade, from casual observer to board member. Under the leadership of President and CEO David Madeira, fundraisers generated over $85m, the museum was built, and a year ago last weekend, it opened to the public. This is cause…

This week it’s really Tony’s Tale. I decided a couple of weeks ago that it would be good to exercise some of the SCM fleet, specifically the four-doors we have in the basement. As I was busy being the hovering “mother hen” and shepherding the gerbils down the freeway, I asked Tony to be both…

There’s been a lot of change in the SCM garage the past few months, and all of it for the good. In the recent past, we’ve been sampling cars that have always intrigued us, to see if they had staying power once they were daily drivers. I’ll be the first to admit that collector-car hot…