Shifting Gears

The confetti cannons will belch their crumpled-paper payloads around 4 p.m. on Sunday, August 20. Best of Show for the 2017 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance will have been crowned. And with that culmination of the week’s activities, hundreds of thousands of car fanatics will begin the trek home from Monterey Car Week. While our focus…

I have a pet peeve at concours. It’s owners who insist on leaving the hoods of their cars open all day long. It’s hardly the way designers would want their cars seen. Further, the hoods jutting upwards are a jarring contrast to the elegant setting of a concours field. A few weeks ago, I wrote…

We were crossing the Oregon High Desert at 80 mph in a 52-year-old Alfa Romeo when Bradley’s jacket blew out the window. A second earlier he had been struggling to get one arm out of a sleeve. We were about 20 miles from Madras, OR, in a caravan of vintage Alfas. This was the Alfa…

The 1960 Bugeye I bought for my 10-year-old son Bradley 18 months ago is finally home in the SCM garage. When I bought this Bugeye, I accomplished two goals with one car. First, I was paying a tribute to my own beginnings in sports cars. My first car was a Bugeye — purchased the day…

We’ve come up with the ultimate SCM road trip. We’re combining perhaps the most insignificant collector car with the longest possible trip. Here’s your chance to become a part of it. We’ve acquired a 1974 Bradley GT. My 9-year-old son is named Bradley; how could I resist? Think how much more interesting my choices would…

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.…

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…

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…

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.…