Shifting Gears
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The Millennials Are Coming! Vote Today
We at SCM believe the car hobby is thriving and growing, and new generations of enthusiasts are becoming a part of it all the time. Here’s your chance to help us recognize them. Later this year, SCM will name 40 enthusiasts under 40 years old who are making a difference in the classic car world.…
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Cool Runnings
We do these things to ourselves. On purpose. It’s part of our old-car madness. When American Car Collector contributor Michael Pierce and his wife, Linda, invited me to spend Christmas Day night with them, it became an excuse to give an old car some exercise. They live in Carlton, OR, a bucolic town in the…
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Three Cars Calling to Me
When I start fidgeting around wondering which car I should get next, my friends call it “car knitting.” Currently, I’ve got a tidy, tightly focused collection of Alfas, ranging from a 1958 Giulietta Sprint Veloce to a 1967 Duetto. All the cars are in fine fettle or approaching it. The cars that have been calling…
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Death Waits for No One
The email arrived on July 1, 2016. It was from my oldest and dearest friend, Bjarne Holm: Hi Keith. Bad news on the health front. I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer early last month. My prognosis is a few months to a few years, depending on how I respond to treatment. … I’m trying to…
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From Chateaus to Lava Fields
Each August and September, the collector car world hits high gear. Everything that happens before just anticipates the explosion of activities that mark the end of summer. Normally, this is a busy time for me — and the gang at SCM. But this year, hectic, frenetic and “my hair was on fire” seem too-mild adjectives.…
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Monterey Week Isn’t Just About the Money
The pundits didn’t wait for the Monterey Car Week auctions to end before weighing in with banshee-like wails of market distress. “Saturday night auctions fail to meet 2015 levels” The Los Angeles Times headlined before the Gooding auction on Sunday. Bloomberg weighed in on Monday, “Monterey Auctions Continue to Slide after 2014 Peak.” “Next month,…
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Money is Big, But Passion Drives the Hobby
Each year, this issue falls in the lull just before the great Super Bowl contest that is Monterey Car Week. Each of the auction companies on the Peninsula has its lineups set. All the seven- and eight-figure, market-defining cars have been extensively promoted and the potential bidders courted. Within a few days after you read…
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Why We Do the Things We Do
According to Jerry Tilley, captain of the Aleutian Ballad, a crab boat featured in TV’s “The Deadliest Catch,” the scene in which a 60-foot rogue wave catches his 107-foot boat broadsides and flips it onto its beam end is one of the most-watched excerpts of the hit show on YouTube, with more than 1.45 million…
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Mind If We Gawk?
It was just three months ago when, in this column, I pompously and piously pronounced that I would never again drive at excess speeds on a public highway. I referred to the 140 mph I had averaged testing the Ford GT in 2006. Two days later the call from Lamborghini came, asking if I would…
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Saying Goodbye to the Amazon
It was two years ago that we watched our 1967 Volvo 122S arrive on a car hauler from Madison, WI. And now we’re going to watch it leave. Owning the Amazon has been a delightful and enlightening experience. It was a good car when it arrived (unlike so many of the cars that I acquire),…