Buy What You Love, Pay What You Should
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Just What the Doctor Ordered
With inheritance check in hand, I made a list of my favorite 20 British sports cars. It took only 20 minutes. {vsig}2008-9_2220{/vsig} What a coincidence. I’ve just been left a great deal of money and been informed I must pick the top 20 British cars I’ve admired in my years at SCM. It took me…
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Porsches You Have To Drive
When the slogan says there is no substitute, it means there is no substitute outside the family {vsig}2008-9_2225{/vsig} You can’t understand the Porsche gestalt without driving the cars. Looking at pictures and reading stories is a great way to prepare yourself, but true enlightenment only comes to those who drink the Kool-Aid. As my way…
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A Beetle in a Lovely Italian Suit
The real bug with any Karmann-Ghia is rust. It’s claimed nearly all of the early cars, and it can appear anywhere on the body {vsig}2008-9_2217{/vsig} By the mid-1950s, it appeared certain that the West German economic miracle would be sustained. Luxury models from BMW and Mercedes-Benz began to reappear. Even Volkswagen began to consider something…
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Do You Know the Way to Monterey?
The Insider’s Seminar is the one time each year that SCMers can come together to discuss the state of the market and the trends to come More than 20 years have passed since my first vintage-car-themed Monterey visit. The tale below is now an oft-heard one, repeated by nearly Monterey veteran. Back then the vintage…
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1944 Volkswagen Schwimmwagen
Schwimmwagen owners seem to be an enthusiastic crowd, often seen in the company of drastically less hip Amphicars Porsche’s Type 60 (the Volkswagen prototype), with its strong backbone chassis and air-cooled engine, had been recognized as an ideal basis for the German army’s proposed Kübelwagen (“bucket car”)-a lightweight, open utility vehicle. A small number of…
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1964 Ford Galaxie 500 Hard Top
My 9-year-old son was very agitated as I loaded the car. He said “Dad, you can replace any one of the others-this is unique” {vsig}2008-8_2205{/vsig} Built by tobacco heir Zachary Reynolds, the “Tobacco King” 1964 Ford Galaxie was as wild an example of a Rocket Drag Axle-equipped car as one could ask for. Playboy, pilot,…
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1971 Ferrari 512 M
These difficult cars have finally gotten the development they didn’t get when racing in anger and have become superb vintage racers {vsig}2008-8_2214{/vsig} In 1968, the rules for sports car racing were changed, limiting Group 6 prototypes to a maximum 3-liter engine capacity. For the 1970 season, Ferrari decided to do what Porsche had done earlier…
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The Dandy Griffith
Unlike the environmentally conscious, fuel-sipping, ultra-low emissions, and utterly boring “hybrid” cars of today, a whole different group deserved that name in the 1960s. They consisted of European sports cars that fell into the hands of cottage industry “manufacturers,” which took Italian and British sports car sophistication (or lack thereof) and shoehorned in American V8…
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Making Sense of $43 Million at Maranello
Buyers will pay over the odds for a perfect, no stories road car just to feel they have the best available {vsig}2008-8_2210{/vsig} Machiavelli was Italian. So were Mussolini and Enzo Ferrari (not that I’m comparing them). And although he isn’t, Scuderia Ferrari’s director Jean Todt has probably lived there long enough to qualify. I grew…
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1976 Lagonda V8 Series 1 Saloon
What’s interesting about “007” is that it has been hot-rodded, modernized, and neutered of its ZF 5-speed {vsig}2008-8_2208{/vsig} Lagonda had been dormant for a decade when Aston Martin revived the marque in 1974 as the model name for a sensational new four-door sedan based on the existing V8 coupe. Launched at the London Motor Show…