Shifting Gears

July is an oddly quiet month in the collector car world. While there are auctions going on, vintage car shamans are still picking apart the results of the RM Maranello ($28.4m), Bonhams Monaco ($6.2m), and Mecum Indy ($33.6m) sales. And through those results, they are attempting to cast their stones and predict what will happen…

It’s been nearly ten years since I last drove in the California Mille. Dodge was the primary sponsor then, and I enjoyed the Northern California countryside from behind the wheel of a Viper. After growing up driving Alfas, with their puny 4-cylinder, 80-ci engines, mashing the throttle on a 450-horsepower, 488-ci V10 rocket sled was…

The Grays Harbor Indoor Professional Rodeo is a three-day event, and includes Bronc Riding, Bull Riding, Calf Roping, Breakaway Roping, Steer Wrestling, Team Roping, Barrel Racing, and more. My wife’s father has a race-engine shop outside Elma, Washington, where the rodeo is held. Located between Olympia and Aberdeen in central-western Washington, it’s just two hours…

I propose we take a break from the constant bric-a-brac of the market. At least for a few days, let’s transport ourselves back to a simpler era, when the fundamental question wasn’t how much your motorcar was worth, but whether it could actually travel 60 miles without breaking down. In conjunction with Steve Austin, we…

Since the end of the Scottsdale auctions, the flow of emails, letters, and phone calls has been relentless. Half are shrill diatribes, demanding that SCM support the market. Any description of prices as falling, or buyers being cautious, is viewed as sabotaging the market. The second half contends that SCM is soft-pedaling the truth and…

Sometimes you just need a break. So last Saturday, we pulled out the 1965 Alfa Giulia Spider Veloce and the 2000 Boxster S. SCM Legal Analyst John Draneas and wife Carlyn fired up their Lotus Elise (or would have had it actually started; more about that later), and CM Contributor Michael Pierce and his significant…

If ever we needed a respite from being pummeled by bad news, it is now. Scarcely a day goes by without a headline about an investment firm failing, a newspaper declaring bankruptcy, or a car company down to its last few billion dollars. The Dow continues to swing unpredictably like the needle of a magnet…

We’ve had quite a run-up in the past few years, so a modest correction will still leave most collectors far ahead of where they were in 2004 At SCM, we sometimes feel like we are in a small spotter’s ship, stationed in the middle of an ocean. From time to time as we crest a…

The headlines have been relentless. “Dow plunges another 600 points.” “Consumer confidence slips again.” “Banks in every country facing liquidation.” Those of us who have been around the collector car market for a while can’t help but think of the crash of 1987, which started the flow of funds into the collector car market. The…

The continued buoyancy of the market at the top end is proof that America has the largest number of wealthy people of any nation in the world The Monterey vintage week takes up about four months of every year. There are two months of preparation for it, which at SCM means poring over each auction…