Buy What You Love, Pay What You Should
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Your Year-End Car Collection Checklist
It’s the end of a great year for the collector car market. As it winds down, readers should take the opportunity to focus on a number of planning details. Tax rates likely to stay the same Year-end tax planning doesn’t look terribly complicated this year. Election season is in full swing — even though the…
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Volkswagen’s Hot Hatch Turns Collectible
By 1970, Volkswagen’s “People’s Car,” the venerable Type 1 Beetle, was long in the tooth. The company knew it was time for a successor — something cleaner than the stinky old air-cooled model, with a modern body design. The company got to work on a new project called the Type 17. The new car used…
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Tank Swap
The average muscle car is over 40 years old now, and it’s easy to forget that it lived a full life during that time — a life that likely filled its original fuel tank with rocks and rust scale. If you’ve ever run an old car out of gas, you probably cursed this stuff as…
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1972 BMW 3.0 CSL
The early 1970s were landmark years for BMW, for not only did the German manufacturer power Jean-Pierre Jarier to the European Formula 2 Championship, it also captured the European Touring Car Championship using one of the most iconic racing saloons of modern times: the 3.0 CSL, known popularly as the Batmobile. BMW had returned to…
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2005 Saleen S7 Twin Turbo
The S7 Twin Turbo presented here stands out from the rest of S7 production for several reasons. Primarily, it was the first S7 to be fitted with the Competition Package upgrade, and according to Saleen, it is one of only two such cars to produce 1,000 horsepower via increased turbocharger boost and revised engine mapping.…
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1982 Porsche 956
The history of 956003, and the Porsche 956 program at large, can be tracked back to 1981. That year, the FIA began to roll out regulations for its new Group C category for sports car racing, designed to replace both Group 5 (closed touring prototypes like the 935) and Group 6 (open sports car prototypes…
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1927 Bentley 6½ Litre Le Mans Sports
As with all great W.O. Bentley-era cars, the legendary 6½ Litre owes its existence to the original 3-liter design. Racing success, including the 1924 and 1927 Le Mans wins, quickly drove sales, with buyers soon demanding ever-more luxurious and heavy custom coachwork, resulting in the more powerful 4½ Litre, which in modified form earned Bentley’s…
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1955 Lancia Aurelia B24 S Spider America
This B24 S Spider America had been ordered new by the West Coast Lancia distributor, the now-legendary Kjell Qvale, to be sold out of his San Francisco-based British Motor Car distributorship. Qvale is believed to have sold chassis 1138 to one of the top managers in his organization, Mr. Robert G. Gillespie. Smart businessmen, both…
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New Players on the Peninsula
A new set of players ran onto the Monterey Peninsula this August. They were young, cocky, and didn’t give a rip about what we baby boomers thought they should buy or what they should spend. These guys in their 30s and their 40s reminded me of confident baseball players during their first season in the…
