Columns

Provenance As an Asset: A New Issue for the Taxman

We are addressing provenance created by the owner after a car’s acquisition, and whether the costs involved can be used to reduce the gain on the sale Many collectors are selling cars they have owned for several years, often for substantially more money than they paid for them. In many […]

Cautious Buyers Raising the Bar

As readers of SCM know, my day job is finding new homes for old Ferraris. Over the many years I’ve been involved with the market, I’ve seen it undergo several permutations. Now, the digital revolution has really hit the market full force, and it’s changing the ways cars are marketed-not […]

Beach Blanket Bimbos

Association with the glamour of the Riviera of the 1960s and people like Aristotle Onassis can make people do silly things at auction Beach cars are frivolous, slow, and silly, but they’re cute as hell, and in the case of Fiat and Renault Jollys, the association with the glamour of […]

Predilections and Predictions

July is an oddly quiet month in the collector car world. While there are auctions going on, vintage car shamans are still picking apart the results of the RM Maranello ($28.4m), Bonhams Monaco ($6.2m), and Mecum Indy ($33.6m) sales. And through those results, they are attempting to cast their stones […]

1980 BMW M1 Coupe

This was an extraordinary result, greater than the next highest street M1 sale on record by nearly 50% A proposed Group 5 “Silhouette Formula” for production-based cars triggered the M1 program in the mid-1970s, a mid-engined concept car designed in-house at BMW by Paul Bracq providing the basis. Ex-racing driver […]

1965 Chevrolet Chevelle Z16 Prototype

It’s quite possible the Z16 was the first Chevrolet product to be powered by the legendary big-block, beating its counterparts by a few weeks The early success of other GM division big-block cars pushed Chevrolet to pump up the power in its 1965 Chevelle in a big way, stuffing the […]

1990 Ferrari 641/2 F1

The buzz at the auction was that this car was unusual and desirable in being completely ready to run with the F1 Clienti. The buyer bought it for that purpose Ferrari entered 1990 with a dream driver lineup. Nigel Mansell was in his second season with the Scuderia and Alain […]

1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa

These cars brought Maranello four World Constructors Championships and four victories at Le Mans. Few, if any, cars have a more impressive resume In 1957, the Commission Sportive Internationale contemplated new rules to make sports car racing safer after the 1955 disaster at Le Mans. Anticipating a reduction in capacity […]

1970 Aston Martin DB6 Mk II

Two things kept the price down: British buyers are notoriously suspicious of automatics in “sporty” cars; and it was presented on a cheap set of tires The culmination of Aston Martin’s long-running line of “DB” 6-cylinder sports saloons, the DB6 was introduced in 1965. Aston Martin lengthened the wheelbase by […]