I remember clearly when I decided to launch the Alfa Romeo Market Letter. It was 1988, and the market was beginning to heat up. I had recently left my day job as a manager of Ron Tonkin’s Gran Turismo in Portland, OR, where I sold Ferraris, Maseratis, Alfa Romeos and Lotuses. I devoured the various market letters when they arrived. The patriarch of the clan was Gerald Roush’s Ferrari Market Letter, unique in its insistence that sellers list the VIN numbers of their cars. The Porsche Market Letter, the Maserati Market Letter and more filled my mailbox. The upstart of the […]
I remember clearly when I decided to launch the Alfa Romeo Market Letter. It was 1988, and the market was beginning to heat up. I had recently left my day job as a manager of Ron Tonkin’s Gran Turismo in Portland, OR, where I sold Ferraris, Maseratis, Alfa Romeos and Lotuses.
I devoured the various market letters when they arrived. The patriarch of the clan was Gerald Roush’s Ferrari Market Letter, unique in its insistence that sellers list the VIN numbers of their cars. The Porsche Market Letter, the Maserati Market Letter and more filled my mailbox. The upstart of the gang was the Tower Report, which had more editorial comment than the FML.
As yet, there was no Alfa Romeo Market Letter. My fear was that someone else would get the jump on me and start one, that it wouldn’t be done to the high standard set by Gerald, and that I would regret not creating one myself.
So I carefully scrawled an advertisement on the tissue-thin page of the Hemmings Motor News ad form and submitted it. It went something like this. “Subscribe today to the Alfa Romeo Market Letter. Prices, market trends, classifieds and more. One year, just $32.”
This being the pre-Internet age, about six weeks later I started getting checks. Soon there were over one hundred of them, and I realized I had better produce something!
I decided to print the Alfa Romeo Market Letter on blue paper, as I liked the distinctive nature of the Ferrari Market Letter’s yellow paper with the masthead in red.
Soon enough, the first issue was on the Multilith duplicator at the local quick-print shop, and my publishing career was launched.
Geneva, Guggisberg and Van Schoote
The first issue carried an in-person review of the Geneva Auction, put on by Al Guggisberg (“Guggie”). Working at the hotel, if memory serves me, was Patrick Van Schoote, who became enamored of the auction circus, taught himself Japanese, and, partly because of a long-standing association with Symbolic Motors, has gone on to become one of the great players in the Japanese market.
At that time, I was also the editor of a newsletter called Automotive Investor (which we later purchased), and I recall taking a fax machine and a voltage converter to Europe, so I could fax in auction descriptions to the Mothership and we could beat the competition by weeks — not today’s Internet-fueled nanoseconds — with breaking news about auction results.
The secret sauce
Even then, the formula for the reports was the same. I described the condition of each car in detail, provided a VIN number, gave the selling price or high bid, and an analysis of the result. The root for that formula came from the fax reports I created for overseas clients when I was selling cars to Europe.
When I would describe a car to a client, I would give a detailed overview of the car and enough information so that the potential customer could create a mental picture of the car. For overall condition, I would choose between “not running,” “runs,” “runs and will drive around the block,” “runs and will get you 100 miles,” and “runs and you could drive it across the country.”
One sale I remember in particular was what I called “Five Pigs in a Blanket.” I had come across someone who had been hoarding cast-iron Tipo 102 Alfa 2000 Spiders for reasons unknown, and then inexplicably left them out in the wet Oregon weather to gradually melt into the ground.
I bought the five, and after carefully liberating the key parts, such as trunk and floor mats (which were not being reproduced at that time, and which makes me appreciative of Re-Originals every time I order rubber pieces for my Alfas), I sold the package of piggies to Jürgen End of Saarbrucken, Germany. He was delighted to have his own instant Tipo 102 parts yard.
DIY printing
Those were our cowboy days. I soon learned that both Roush and the publisher of the Maserati Market Letter, Frank Mandarano, owned their own presses. Roush ran a Chief duplicator and Mandarano a black Heidelberg 64.
Showing more bravery than knowledge, I bought a bankrupt print shop and began printing the Alfa Market Letter on a Multilith 1850. We graduated to a Hamada 880 14×18-inch one-blanket two-color press. Then we moved up to a gray 18×24-inch Heidelberg 64 — a one-color press, so when we printed four colors on two sides, a single piece of paper went through the press eight times — and finally a 40-inch Komori two-tower.
That press, which I trucked up from Los Angeles, was supposedly the one that printed the brochures for the first “Star Wars” movie. I liked believing that, but then I think that everything sellers say about their cars is true as well, especially if it’s an Alfa from the ’50s or ’60s.
25 years later
Now, Alfa Romeo Market Letter has grown into Sports Car Market and has a sister publication, American Car Collector. A dedicated staff of 15 full-time old-car fanatics — and many more auction reporters and contributors all over the world — stoke the collector-car boilers each issue.
Each month, SCM is sent digitally to the Waseca, MN, plant of the Brown Printing Company, and every edition is produced more beautifully than I ever could have imagined 25 years ago.
We take part of this issue to celebrate our silver anniversary — and to acknowledge the subscribers and advertisers who have been with us for 20 years or more.
Just think, a quarter century has passed, and we are still driving the same cranky old cars, still trying to find that elusive piece of door trim and still wondering if we should replace our factory Solexes with Webers. Presidents have come and gone, the economy has had its booms and busts, and the Prius has become the best-selling car in California — the once-home of the sports-car craze.
Here at SCM we’re girding up for the next 25 years.
What we know for certain is that in 2038, we’ll still have subscribers asking what their MGB is worth, and does it matter that it was repainted in pink instead of the original green and has tasty cloth seat covers over the tattered original leather?
Our answer? What matters is that you are enjoying the car, and letting it be a time machine that takes you to a land where being the driver of a little, under-powered car from across the ocean makes you the cat’s meow of the automotive world. ?