Columns
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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 the Riviera of the 1960s…
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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 and predict what will happen…
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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 Jochen Neerpasch was responsible for…
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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 smallish mid-sized mainstay with the…
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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 Prost was making his debut…
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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 for sports cars, Ferrari began…
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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 four inches over the DB5…
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1930 Citroën Kégresse “Forestiere” Autochenille
A curious mixture of romantic visionary and practical businessman, André Citroën knew a promising invention when he saw one. French-born Adolphe Kégresse had developed an idea at the behest of his erstwhile employer, Czar Nicholas II, who had wanted a means of adapting his cars to drive across deep snow. Rather than use the heavy…
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Track Day Insurance
High Performance Driver Education coverage insures bad things don’t happen to good people (that’s you) during track days Here’s a man-bites-dog twist to track day crash liability concerns, resulting from a crash at a Dodge Viper Owners Invitational track event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Dodge sponsors such events periodically, and invites Viper owners to…
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The New Reality
The inspiration for this column occurred in March, when I returned from lunch to find an email from a Lusso owner who wanted us to sell his car and net himself $700,000-about $200,000 over the retail price for his Lusso in today’s market. The very next email was from a client who had been web…