Blogs

At a certain point during my recovery from my stroke, I decided to look for classic cars with automatic transmissions. While universally loathed by enthusiasts — including me — I hoped that maybe I was just overlooking what might be a decent motoring experience. I bought two automatics. The first was a 1965 Volvo 122S…

Last week I asked you to pick four cars for a $500,000 collection. Your many and diverse answers can be seen below this blog. This week I’ll tell you what my three-car collection would be, and why. I’m not setting a price boundary for myself, as market value has nothing to do with why I…

We do this exercise every so often. I offer a target and you start throwing darts. We played the original version on an SCM tour bus headed to the vintage Monaco GP. I think our target then was $25,000. Times have changed. Here’s today’s challenge: Tell us your four-car collection with a total value under…

There’s been plenty of discussion about how Bring a Trailer has changed the world of collecting. The simplest example goes back to the early days of SCM. When we wrote about a Ferrari Dino selling at Barrett-Jackson, the magazine was the only place that sale would be covered in any detail, or even mentioned. From…

SCM Editor-In-Chief Jeff Sabatini recently took our 2006 Lotus Elise in for its every-two-years emission testing. We expected it would be routine, as it powered by a modern (by our standards) Toyota engine. It failed. But not because of emissions issues. On the printout we got from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, the last…

Any show or club meeting is just an excuse for like-minded people to come together. You might bump into me at the next meeting of the Portland Aquarium society looking for some long-finned zebra danios. Or at the Oregon Reptile Show where I got our last three crested geckos. If you were on the grounds…

The Oregon Festival of Cars is coming up next weekend. The brainchild of SCM’s Legal Files contributor John Draneas, it’s a relaxed way to spend a weekend in Bend, OR, looking at old cars and chatting with friends. It also marks the unofficial end of “car season” in our area. SCM is a long-time sponsor,…

This year we made the decision to drive to Monterey from Portland, about 750 miles each way. In previous decades, we had flown to San Jose, CA, picked up a rental car and driven to the peninsula, repeating the process for the trip home. Door to door, it would take about eight hours. I’ve learned…