Brand heritage has been the rage with new car makers for some time now. “Bentley Returns to Le Mans” trumpets one ad agency, as the now-VW-owned, once-English company attempts to regain some of the glory it covered itself with sixty years ago. The PT Cruiser is a gangster car for […]

We of the Boomer generation grew up sneaking J.C. Whitney and Warshawsky catalogs onto our desks during biology lectures. Figuring out how to afford those trick, high-compression, .040-inch oversize pistons and rings for our Bug Eye Sprites was a daily topic of discussion. Tinkering with cars was our lifestyle. There […]

This is all Martin Swig’s fault. The iconoclastic, San Francisco-based collector and enthusiast has been trying to lay us away in a Ford for some time. Not just any Ford, mind you, but a 1954 Mainline Six Business Coupe. “It’s the model Piero Taruffi drove in the ’54 Carrera,” Swig […]

I have long argued that cars are machinery first, and art second. With the very rare exception of pure show cars, they were designed to be driven, not to be displayed for gawking passersby. It is only through the use of a car that its underlying magnificent strengths and disappointing […]

The streets of X’ian, China are a maelstrom of transportation contraptions, from hand-drawn oxcarts laden with unopened, boxed color televisions to brand-new Mercedes S-class sedans. While the Chinese may suffer from a lack of political freedom, in terms of motorized conveyances, they are Joan Claybrooke’s worst nightmare. The rule of […]

As the Pacific Northwest settles into winter and the temperatures drop below freezing each night, we dress our cars in their winter clothes just as we make sure our heavy coats and gloves are hung by the door. Cindy’s ’83 Mercedes-Benz 123-body 300 Turbodiesel, which lives outdoors, suckles nightly on […]

Watching Formula One Champion Phil Hill tinker with the handbrake assembly on a 1929 Bentley three-liter open tourer was like being at a rehearsal in Manhattan while modern dance choreographer Martha Graham fine-tuned her ballets. Graham had an instinctive understanding of how to put a dance together for maximum artistic […]

It’s hard to kill a car you care about. Case in point: two years ago we bought our son Eric, then eighteen years old, a 1978 Mercedes 280 saloon. This car was chosen after his older brother managed to hasten the path of two more sporty automobiles, a Fiat 124 […]

Can there be any time of year better than this for the enthusiast? As this issue of SCM is being put to bed, we are preparing our 1962 Ferrari 330 America for its vintage event debut on the Monte Shelton Northwest Classic Rally, and, simultaneously, the SCM staff is packing […]

The array of cars being offered by RM’s Monterey Sports Car Auction, Christie’s at Pebble Beach and Brooks at Quail Lodge during the Monterey weekend is unprecedented in its scale, scope and quality. There will be over $50M in cars crossing the block during a three-day period, a tribute to […]