Buy What You Love, Pay What You Should
Blogs
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Keith’s Blog: Happy Independence Day
I’m on a big Land Rover club expedition through the rugged terrain of eastern Oregon right now, and I keep thinking how lucky we are to share this great world of old cars and their adventures. Bradley is along on the trip, and he’s seeing some amazing sights — and loving every minute of bouncing…
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The Millennial and the MG, Part Two: Perfect Stasis
It’s a sunny Saturday morning and, from behind the wheel of my 1971 MGB Mk II, the storefronts of Detroit’s M-1 Woodward Avenue peel past my periphery. With my head cocked back and a big grin on my face, I am fully engaged in the buttery smoothness of the roadster’s boisterous four-cylinder, the enthrallingly tight…
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Jim’s Blog: Stock or Not?
When I was building my ’72 Chevy truck, I kept the engine and drivetrain as stock as possible, all the way down to the original rebuilt Q-jet carburetor. Why mess with something that worked? But there have been huge leaps in technology made in the decades since 1972, and it’s trickled into the old car…
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The smell of gasoline
I don’t think I’ll ever get the smell out of gasoline out of my head. I don’t mean my mind, as in my thoughts or memories (though it’s been seared into those, too). Rather, I mean my cranium, my skull, my head cavities. That’s because last weekend I took it upon myself to remove the…
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Keith’s Blog: Unrestored in Costa Rica
The crappier the car the better. That seems to be the mantra of some collectors these days. Instead of trying to restore cars to better-than-new condition, they look for the most original vehicle they can find. The more bedraggled the better. You can even find people who will “un-restore your car” and make it look…
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Jim’s Blog: Movie Cars Matter
The 1980s brought us a lot of things, but for a certain generation of car people, the most important of those things was the VCR. When the VCR became commonplace in the American household, kids could all of a sudden watch movies or recorded TV over and over again — and that’s exactly what we…
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Keith’s Blog: When It’s Time for a Car to Go
We’ve decided that our time with the SCM Mehari has come to an end. A couple of Alfas are coming out of restoration, so we need to free up some space in the garage. We’ve enjoyed the Mehari — and we’ve done quite a bit to make it a very good driver (all things in…
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Keith’s Blog: Driven: Two Alfas, a Lotus and a Viper
I had a gearhead’s holiday last weekend. In the course of two days, I got to put nearly 100 miles each on the SCM Lotus Elise, the ACC Dodge Viper ACR GTS and two vintage Alfas — the 1965 Giulia Spider Veloce and the 1967 GTV. These are all sports cars, but they each represent…
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Jim’s Blog: What Steers Your Collection?
I’ve always been a car guy, but the drive got even more serious when I got my driving permit and finally slid behind the wheel of an actual car. A few spins in my sister’s ’95 Dodge Neon had me circling classic car ads in the local paper for cooler options. My father, also a…
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Keith’s Blog: I Almost Bought a Junior Z
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:…