Keith Martin
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Keith’s Blog: This is NOT About Arizona
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…
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Keith’s Blog: To Denver and Back in the Same Morning, Plus New Year’s Resolutions
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…
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Keith’s Blog: It’s My Birthday, and I’ll Buy If I Want To
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…
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Keith’s Blog: Look Homeward, Volvo!
As SCM readers are keenly aware, the key to buying any old car is turning the process into an adventure. I knew that picking up the newly purchased 1973 Volvo 1800 ES with four-year-old Bradley would have to be full of first-times if I wanted the experience to compare with fresh and visceral memories of…
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Keith’s Blog: Last Year You Sold me a Range Rover, This Year Sell Me a P1800!
It’s Road Trip Time It’s time for my annual fly-and-buy road trip with my daughter, Alex. She’s returning home for Christmas break after a semester studying marketing and business management in Grenoble, France, and she’s already asking what we’re going to buy this year. Last year I was on the hunt for a Range Rover…
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Keith’s Blog: What Do You Want Under Your Tree This Year?
For those in need of a reason to buy a car, the holiday season offers the perfect excuse. As my birthday comes near Christmas, I conjure up even more fantastical justifications. It’s the time of year that you’re likely to hear phrases like these from around the SCM office: “It’s Christmas, I deserve an…
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Keith’s Blog: Audi S6 Avant vs. P1800—And the Rovers Are Ready To Rumble
Well, 73 blog comments later, my search has narrowed. I appreciate the knowledge, enthusiasm and opinions you’ve all shared during the past week, and you have definitely propelled things forward. Here’s where we stand. I’ve located a gray / gray 1995.5 Audi Avant in the Pacific Northwest that seems like a good candidate for the…
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Keith’s Blog: Is it P1800 time? Or Would a 1995 Audi S6 Trump All?
Passions and opinions run deep in the world of sports cars. To the many, many people who emailed me their suggestions as to whether the next addition to the SCM stable should be an Alfa Berlina, a BMW 2002 tii “roundie” or a Volvo P1800, I thank you. Just when I thought I had settled…
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Keith’s Blog: What’s Next – P1800, 2002 tii or Berlina?
Christmas is approaching, and I’m wondering what to get SCM to celebrate the holidays. In the past few months, we’ve sold our Series III Land Rover 88, our Volvo 544 and all three of our MGBs. Our Mercedes Ponton went away as well, but through mishap rather than planning. So it’s time to think about…
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Keith’s Blog: Sensory Bombardment at SEMA
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, in that case, here is the pictorial equivalent of 25,000 words, which is still not sufficent to describe the sprawling acreage of automotive sensory bombardment that is SEMA. It wasn’t our first time at the annual Specialty Equipment Market Association trade show, but there really…