Affordable Classics

Ask any classic car enthusiast to name the 10 most significant vintage race cars of all time, and I’d wager that the Jaguar C-type or D-type — or maybe both — would appear on the list. It’s no accident that the XK-SS — the street-variant of the D-type — is one of the finalists in…

Aston Martin and its various ownership incarnations have perfected the art of going under — think massive avalanche — and then being saved for another life of making cars. Anyone familiar with the history of this much-admired, cherished and revered company realizes that Lazarus has nothing on these car builders from the United Kingdom. The…

Few modern classics offer more performance and visual bang than a Lotus Esprit Turbo SE. Somehow, this softened version — the less-aggressive, non-origami, original shape — has aged gracefully over the past 20 or so years. Peter Stevens gets credit for this design, with honorable mention to Julian Thompson for the refreshing in 1994. I’m…

Is there such a thing as an affordable classic or a good deal during Monterey auction week? Watching collectors and enthusiasts flock to the numerous auctions searching for a special, once-in-a-lifetime deal is like watching a professional goat rodeo. If you are a chaos junkie, this is for you, but making sense of this madness…

The 105 Series Alfa Romeos are the cars most non-Alfisti think of when you say “Alfa.” And that’s not surprising, as all of them — coupe (GTV), convertible (Spider) or sedan (Berlina) — offer a level of mechanical sophistication, build quality and pure driving fun which is hard to beat in their price ranges. In…

The last volume-produced traditional British roadster was the Triumph TR6. Even in 1969 when it was introduced, it was obsolete. Magazines such as Road & Track clamored for better, newer sports cars with modern engines, chassis and unibody construction—cars that would finally dispense with antiquated features like lever-action shocks and feeble heaters. In early 1975,…

By 1940, military planners all but knew that the United States was eventually going to end up embroiled in World War II. Specifications were drawn up for military-specific truck configurations, and Dodge was at the forefront. Contracts were let initially for a series of half-ton trucks based on the new-for-1940 Dodge civilian trucks with several…

Daimler of the U.K. (no relation to Daimler-Benz) was mainly a purveyor of ultra-stodgy sedans, hearses and limousines to British nobility and the royal family. They were as unlikely an entrant into the sports car market as Kaiser and Nash had been a few years early with the Kaiser-Darrin and the Nash-Healey. Nevertheless, the moribund…