Shifting Gears

I grew up in the Parkside District of San Francisco, with a view of the Pacific Ocean from the bedroom in the back of our house. There was a bakery shop around the corner on Taraval Street. Each day on the way home from elementary school, I would stop in. The baker would squirt some…

On July 12 of this year, the last of the classic cars on the SCM 30th Anniversary tour arrived at the posh Heathman Hotel in downtown Portland, OR. For the previous four days, these 1950s and 1960s sports cars, all owned and driven by SCM subscribers, explored the backroads of Oregon. Stops included Timberline Lodge…

In the years that SCM has been reporting on Monterey, we’ve watched the auction sales totals go from $10.8m in 1996 to this year’s $374.4m. From just 209 cars being offered in 1996 at Monterey (Rick Cole and Christie’s), there were 1,389 cars looking for new buyers this year at six auctions. The 2018 results…

I’ve known Brad Miller for 20 years. We have many mutual friends, and his wife, Nancy, and I serve together on the board of directors of Oregon Ballet Theatre. Brad, who’s a successful real-estate investor, and Nancy keep a barge in France in which they ply the canals of Europe several months each year. He’s…

For the past 40 years, the Ferrari 250 GTO has been the “Mona Lisa” of the collector-car market. They represent the last of the front-engined Ferrari customer cars that could be driven on the street and then taken to the track. They were contenders for overall victory in events such as the Tour de France.…

There was no one home at the farmhouse; I knocked on all the doors. I had seen a rototiller in the nearby shed, with one-gallon gas cans next to it. “Anyone here?” I called out again. There was no answer, so I picked up a can and poured the contents into the empty tank of…

We all have our favorite specialists. We have our go-to chefs, sommeliers, gardeners, travel agents and interior designers. We also have our favorite restorers. These are the men and women we turn to when we need our cars done just right. They’re the solution providers when we come across a problem that has others scratching…

Imagine 40 classic cars — many of them Alfas — hitting redline as they climb to historic Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood. Or after a day cruising the wide-open landscapes off Highway 97 past Fort Rock, gathering again to drive around crystal-clear Crater Lake. We’re just a couple of months away from the Sports Car…

I was about 30 miles south of Twin Falls, ID, when a connecting rod broke and exploded through the side of the engine block. I coasted silently to the side of the road in the late-afternoon sun. I was on State Highway 93 — right in the middle of nowhere. Although this happened 50 years…

We picked the cars we planned to profile in this issue during a routine editorial meeting last January. Each month, Managing Editor Jim Pickering goes through recent sales, and he then presents those of interest to me, Executive Editor Chester Allen and Art Directors Dave Tomaro and Jeff Stites. We try to have an entertaining…