Buy What You Love, Pay What You Should
Columns
-
Austin-Healey Bugeye Sprite
Want to make people smile? Just drive a Bugeye Sprite into any old-car gathering and its insouciant expression will have everyone grinning back. For eyes, it has headlamps that look as if they were pasted on as an afterthought, for a nose, a little round emblem, Ad to this the open-mouthed grin of the grilleand…
-
1951 Mercedes-Benz 220 Cabriolet A
Mercedes-Benz recommenced private-car production in 1948, revamping their pre-war Type 170, which had been introduced as long ago as 1931. By 1951 Mercedes appeared to sweep away the austerity of those early post-war years and two new models appeared which made no attempt to be economy models. The cars, which were first shown at Frankfurt,…
-
1953 Cunningham C-3 Coupe
Millionaire American sportsman Briggs Swift Cunningham II was determined to win the Le Mans 24-hour race in an American car. In 1950 he entered two Cadillacs, one of which finished tenth. This motivated Cunningham to develop the C-2R sports car with a Chrysler V8 engine, tubular frame, De Dion axle and full independent suspension. The…
-
1973 Alfa Romeo Junior Zagato
One of the things which marked Alfa Romeo from lesser makers from the 1950s through to the 1970s was that it was able to make small runs of special, lightweight, coupe versions of its mainstream cars. The most prized of these were the cars bodied by Zagato, an expression of the historic relationship between the…
-
1965 Lotus Elan S2 Roadster
The 1960s were the brilliant Indian summer of British sports-car manufacturing, when its factories offered a fascinating choice of high-performance open two-seaters and coupes, all different in character from each other, each destined to become a valuable classic. Outstanding among them was Colin Chapman’s Lotus Elan, a sophisticated little jewel introduced in 1962. At the…
-
1986 Lamborghini LM002 SUV
One of the most exciting off-road vehicles ever conceived, the Lamborghini LM-002 resulted from the marriage of the Countach QV’s 5.2-liter V12 to a functionally styled-some would say brutally styled-4 x 4. The union resulted in scintillating performance and a top speed in excess of 124 mph. The distinctive four-door body was handmade and the…
-
Thank You, Mr. Petersen
We’re busy packing our bags for a pair of trips. First comes an overnight jaunt to Los Angeles for the presentation of the Meguiar’s Collector Car Hobby Person of the Year Award to Robert Petersen. While Petersen is best known for his creation of the car magazine industry with titles including Hot Rod and Motor…
-
Alfa Romeo 2600
There are collectibles that play to the crowd, leaving us all in awe of their technical and artistic mastery-and the amount of money invested in them. Other collectibles, more affordable, strike purely personal chords: a first car; the car I was married in; or the one I’ve wanted forever.Generally Alfa 2600 coupes and Spiders, as…
-
1989 Porsche Carrera Speedster
The six-cylinder boxer engine was a concept originated by Dr. Porsche’s nephew, Ferdinand Piech. Thanks in large part to Piech’s engineering prowess, this aluminum-alloy, air-cooled engine remained a Porsche staple, developing and evolving while remaining true to many of its original design principles. By 1989 the engine had grown from its original 2 liters to…
-
1929 Duesenberg Model J Sports Sedan
It is difficult to imagine the excitement with which the Model J Duesenberg was received in 1929. Here was a chassis with an engine that-at 265 hp-beat its nearest competitor by more than 100 hp. The famed Packard 734 speedster produced 145 hp and the Cadillac V16, 175 hp. Coming from a company whose racing…