Buy What You Love, Pay What You Should
Columns
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When X1/9 Marked the Spot
By the early 1970s, some were predicting the demise of the inexpensive sports car. Modern small sedans like the Audi Fox and VW Rabbit were threatening to render sports cars redundant. It didn’t help that the standard-bearers for the under-$4,000 sports car class were the MG Midget and Triumph Spitfire. Both were ancient in comparison…
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Assisted Suicide, Clunker Style
Over the next few months, nearly 750,000 clunkers are going to be scrapped. Not dismantled, mind you, but smashed and melted into their base, formative materials. Whether or not this is good government policy we’ll leave to our friends at The Economist. And others can debate the relative environmental effects; for instance, some claim the…
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1961 Messerschmitt KR 200 Microcar
The plastic dome permits excellent visibility, but hot, sunny weather turns it into a sauna The roots of the Messerschmitt “Kabinenroller” (cab scooter) go back to post-WWII when Fritz Fend designed a car that wheelchair-bound vets returning from WWII could drive. Two major features made the design work for disabled people: The canopy swung open…
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1936 Lincoln Model K “Howard Hughes” Boattail Speedster
This Lincoln Model K speedster started out as Howard Hughes’s personal 1936 Lincoln K model V12 Limousine, until he converted the car into his idea of a Boattail Speedster. It was originally shipped to Long Beach, California, in January of 1936 and apparently special ordered with only one foot rest in the rear. Other documents…
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1922 Sunbeam 2-Liter Grand Prix
An 87-year-old car is like an older person; you certainly don’t expect them to run and jump with the young folks, but they can be fascinating to be around {vsig}2009-10_2376{/vsig} For 1922 and the following three seasons, the Automobile Club of France elected to limit engine capacity to two liters for cars competing in Grand…
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1990 Ferrari 348 tb
The 348 has good performance, is fun to drive, comfortable, and has eye-catching styling. The service issues have proven to be more myth than reality The Ferrari 348 had the unenviable task of following up Maranello’s best-selling 308/328 duo. A truly innovative design, it was the first Ferrari to be based on a robot-welded monocoque.…
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1924 Bentley 3 Liter Red Label
Any slowdown in Vintage Bentley values due to the current economic climate is likely to push owners toward a cup of tea rather than Valium {vsig}2009-10_2371{/vsig} Chassis 356 was the first “Red Label” Bentley produced, and it was this model that was to lay the foundations of Bentley’s financial success. The final specification of the…
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1970 Lamborghini Miura P400S
The price may have looked high for the U.K., but it equates to about 400k euros. It would be hard to find a nicer LHD car in Europe for the same money {vsig}2009-10_2372{/vsig} “But step back for a minute and work out what makes the Miura so special. In 1966 there was nothing like it.…
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How to Buy a Car in Europe
There’s no uniform code of ownership within the EEC, but each country has documents that will protect you in your transaction After John Draneas’s learned article (April, p. 34) on the title pitfalls of buying a collector car in the U.S., here’s a European perspective. Or, as the exam question might have read: “How is…
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Pre-Purchase Ferrari Inspection Becomes $182k Lawsuit
In November 2005, I wrote a column entitled “The Punch of Deferred C/4 Maintenance… And How I Leaned Into It,” regarding a 365 GTC/4, s/n 14965, that we had sold to Hawaii and bought back 21 years later. This C/4 was a poster child for deferred maintenance, and we paid the price when the repair…