Buy What You Love, Pay What You Should
Columns
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His ‘n’ Hers Ferraris
The Martin-Banzer garage is about to get more interesting. It appears that Cindy Banzer, my wife and SCM Executive Editor, has found her blue 308 GTS, and I’m back in the hunt for a GTC/4.The past few months have been a collector-car dry spell for us, as we’ve focused on growing the magazine. In August,…
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1996-98 BMW Z3 1.9-liter
The Z3 is a Teutonic E-type: long in front, short in back, with muscular curves and a low stance The Z3 was introduced to the public in Goldeneye, the popular 1995 James Bond film that began Pierce Brosnan’s run as 007. As BMW’s first pure sports car in almost forty years, it was not surprising…
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1968 Pontiac GTO Ram Air Convertible
I saw the book of bills the seller had assembled, and the claimed $120,000 spent on restoration was well documented, if a bit outrageous Of the more than 77,000 GTOs built in 1968, fewer than 10,000 were convertibles. The meticulously restored GTO pictured here has only 68,000 original miles and features several factory options, including…
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1952 Nash-Healey Le Mans Sports Racer
If the Cobra is a vaguely tamed raging bull, the Nash-Healey is more of a friendly mutt, concocted while under the influence of cocktails out on the bounding seas The Nash-Healey marque came about from a chance meeting on an ocean liner in 1949. English sports car designer and builder Donald Healey and Nash-Kelvinator president…
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1960 Alfa Romeo 2000 Spider
Maintaining the Solex PH44 carburetors, with their prone-to-malfunction secondaries, is enough to drive almost any technician to heavy drink In 1950, Alfa Romeo turned away from the costly and complicated, hand-built, eight- and six-cylinder high performance sports and racing cars that had made their name before World War II. The new 1900 was intended for…
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1980 Ferrari 512 Berlinetta Boxer
The catalog description went into great detail about it being a fuel-injected car, but it was hard to mistake the four Webers The mid-engined Lamborghini Miura brought Formula One chassis design to the street in the mid-1960s. Ferrari’s response was the 365 GTB/4 Berlinetta Boxer, unveiled at the 1971 Turin Auto Show. The first road-going…
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1930 Bentley Speed Six 6 1/2 Liter Le Mans Replica
At the heart of the Speed Six legend was a phenomenal chassis, which led to many original bodies being replaced with lightweight, homemade, “boy-racer” coachwork The Bentley Speed Six positively shone in long distance endurance racing. At Le Mans in 1929, Woolf Barnato and Tim Birkin stormed to victory at an average speed of 73.62…
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1970 Moretti Sportiva
The heavy body weighed 1,500 pounds, too much for its puny 47-hp motor Giovanni Moretti founded his company in 1925, and started off designing and building motorcycles. The Cita, built in 1946, a tiny two-seater powered by an air-cooled 250-cc motor, was Moretti’s first conventional car. In 1949, Moretti introduced the 600, a front-engine, rear-drive…
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“I Don’t Care What You Say, You’ll Never Have As Many Cars As Harold E. LeMay”
Harold LeMay was a car guy, just like you and me in a lot of ways. He figured out how to use his day job, owning waste-hauling franchises, to help him build his car collection. Myth has it he paid a spiff to garbage collectors who told him about interesting cars they came across on…
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1985-87 Honda CRX Si
The real appeal was a 0-60 time below nine seconds, quicker than a Porsche 944 By the end of the fuel-crisis-plagued 1970s, Honda and its Japanese counterparts had all but beaten the American auto industry into submission with legions of cheap and highly efficient pint-sized sedans and hatchbacks. American muscle was out. Econo-boxes were…