We don’t do things halfway here at SCM. I’ll offer as proof my first muscle car purchase: A 1970 Plymouth Superbird, Vitamin C orange with a black vinyl interior.The year was 1989, and the following advertisement appeared on the front page of the local Autotrader: “1970 Superbird, 29,000 original miles, 4-speed, 440-4bbl, bench seat, window sticker, original paint, $13,500 or best offer.” The car was in Salem, Oregon, 45 miles away.This was about the same time that we were mailing the first issue of the Alfa Romeo Market Letter, and most of my waking hours were spent trying to figure out […]
We don’t do things halfway here at SCM. I’ll offer as proof my first muscle car purchase: A 1970 Plymouth Superbird, Vitamin C orange with a black vinyl interior.
The year was 1989, and the following advertisement appeared on the front page of the local Autotrader: “1970 Superbird, 29,000 original miles, 4-speed, 440-4bbl, bench seat, window sticker, original paint, $13,500 or best offer.” The car was in Salem, Oregon, 45 miles away.
This was about the same time that we were mailing the first issue of the Alfa Romeo Market Letter, and most of my waking hours were spent trying to figure out how to convince my bank to loan me enough to buy a TZ. Nonetheless, the car salesman in me immediately recognized that this ‘Bird was a buy.
As this was the era of cassette-tape answering machines, I employed a trick taught to me by restorer and longtime SCMer Brian Ross, of AutoKrafty. I simply called the number over and over again, leaving slightly different messages, until the tape ran out. As these machines didn’t time stamp the messages, this technique created the impression that a) I was really interested in the car, which I was, and b) that no one else had bothered to call, which was surely not the case.
It was a Wednesday when I essentially disabled the voice recorder, and I began to wait. Saturday morning, at 8 a.m., I got the call: “Hi, I just got back into town and listened to my messages. You sound like you want to see my car.”
An hour later, I was in Salem. The car was in true time-warp condition, even down to the original polyglass tires. It had never been hit or painted, had no rust, and ran strong. I asked the seller how he had come up with the price. “It’s right here in the Old Cars Price Guide,” he said. “It says up to $15,000 for very nice cars, and mine has some rock chips, so I figured $13,500 was fair.”
In true SCM spirit, I was about to offer him $10,000, but he went on to say, “My phone has really been ringing off the hook this morning. I guess it took everyone a while to figure out just what a Superbird is. Anyway, there are about 10 guys on their way over here if you don’t want the car.”
Faster than you could say “winged wonder,” the car was mine at the asking price.
It was quite a change from the various Alfa Giuliettas and Duettos that I had strewn around the neighborhood, in various states of disrepair. The neighborhood kids liked sitting on the wing, and suddenly all the gas
station attendants became my best friends.
I joined the Superbird club, and met some local ‘Bird owners. I took the car to an Alfa trackday at Portland International Raceway, and recall having five of the magazine staff members with me, helmeted and hanging on for dear life as we turned some hot (on the straightaway) and perilous (on anything else) laps.
I learned how to lay a fifty-foot strip of rubber, and how to speedshift the industrially robust gearbox. I also learned what it cost to rent a storage unit long enough to contain the 18-feet, 4-inch car, as it wouldn’t fit in my garage.
Finally, as unsolicited cash offers started coming in, I learned that I had truly scored on this one.
TRADING ONE V8 FOR TWO
I wanted to hang on to the Superbird until just the right sweetheart deal came along, and soon enough it did, in the form of a pair of Alfa Montreals. One silver and the other black, they were being offered by a broker just outside San Francisco. I’d never owned one of these mini-Ghiblis, and the asking price for the pair, $30,000, was exactly what I could get for the Superbird by simply picking up the phone.
As a connoisseur of the market, I knew that this American muscle car stuff was just a flash in the pan, and that the true investment opportunities were with sophisticated European exotics like the Montreal.
I sold the black Montreal for a small profit, and kept the silver one for myself. I recall spending $5,000 getting it to run properly (local guru Nasko mastered the dual Spica injection units). As that was the crazy late ’80s, I eventually sold the car and even made a small profit, which I immediately poured into a host of other worthwhile investments like Maserati 3500 GTs that needed restoration, a RHD 250 GTE that used to have dogs living in it, and a package of six cast-iron-block Alfa 2000 spiders that we referred to, when we slammed them all into a single container to go to collector and SCMer Jurgen End in Saarbrucken, German, as “pigs in a blanket.”
Chances are if I added up the value of all the cars I traded from 1989 through 1991, I would have made far more profit just hanging on to the big orange ‘Bird. But car collecting, like any other speculative financial endeavor, has its hits and misses. Just as it’s too bad that my portfolio isn’t loaded up with eBay stocks rather than Webvan certificates (now being used as doilies), it’s unfortunate that I’ve sold some of the cars I’ve owned and held on to the others. There’s no sense in looking back; at least I don’t have a warehouse full of 0-mile first-generation Miatas and pristine Prowlers.
This issue of SCM has a section on Carroll Shelby, and an SCM Picks guide to the muscle car market. As SCM has developed, despite its original focus on just European sports cars, it has embraced the entire universe of collectible cars. We have found both from reader surveys and conversations with subscribers at numerous venues that rarely do SCMers collect just one kind of car. You’re as likely to see a GT 350 in a reader’s garage sitting next to a Lusso as you are a Hemi ‘Cuda convertible.
LUCKY GETS BENT
Here’s a quick update on the ever-challenging SCM collection. Lucky, our 1965 3-cylinder, two-stroke SAAB, finally has a gearbox that shifts without horrible grinding. Co-owner John Draneas (SCM’s legal eagle) and I have spent more than a year trying to figure out what the problem was, and there has been no shortage of opinions from Saab experts around the world. Suggestions ranged from, “You’re using synthetic oil in the gearbox, and it is too light, which lets the gears turn too fast for the synchros to engage,” to, “The clutch, flywheel and pressure plate are simply worn out,” to, finally, “The gearbox is junk, you’ll have to get another one.”
In a last-ditch effort, we took the car to local Ferrari-and-everything-else specialist Dick Guthrie, at ATD (503.232.5401). We’ve known Dick and his wife Linda for a long time, and he has helped keep SCM cars ranging from an Alfetta GT to a 308 GT4 running right.
He called the day after we dropped Lucky off. “Come get your car, it’s fixed.” How much, we asked. “Fifty bucks. The clutch pedal was bent towards the floor, so it was hitting the floorboard before it was fully engaged.” As neither Draneas nor I are capable of having a car worked on and spending less than $100, just on principle, we had him fix the handbrake and the headlights (useful on winter nights). So, for $101.50, Lucky now shifts like a rally champ from the 1960s. An overnight trip through the snow to Mt. Hood’s Timberline Lodge is already being planned; don’t worry, we’ll pack snowshoes for the walk home just in case.