Torque

Each week, my extended family gets together on Sunday to have dinner together at a place I like to call the Pickering compound — a flatroof house in Portland’s West Hills, built by my great grandfather, grandfather and dad in 1959. It’s full of family heirlooms and history. The grandkids all run around and play,…

After years of watching the market at SCM and ACC, once thing has become clear: change is the only constant. Scottsdale’s numbers are in. In total, the 2019 auctions brought $247m, which was pretty close to last year’s total of $249m. Combine that with Mecum’s $94m Kissimmee sale, and January 2019 kicked off with $341m…

If you’re familiar with ACC, then you know that we’re all about value. Every Market Report and car profile that appears in these pages tells you the price paid for each car at auction. Was this car, at this price, on this day, a good deal? Will it be a good deal tomorrow, or next…

Ispent some quality wheel time in ACC’s ’66 Mustang this month, and it’s a great driver — there’s something special about a car that’s never been blown apart from new. Cars like this just feel more complete. That X-factor is something that’s hard to describe, but if you’ve ever restored a car and found that…

Last summer, I spent a week of quality time under the hood of my ’66 Caprice. I was installing Holley’s Terminator EFI system while most of ACC’s staff was in Monterey, CA, for the Pebble Beach auctions. Normally I’m there, too, but this time was different. I was staring down the ultimate of all deadlines:…

The pages of ACC are filled with all-original and fully restored cars that have sold at auction. You’ll find a bunch of them in our Market Reports, starting on p. 68. Some are cars that have passed only a few miles under their factory-fresh tires, while others are completely rebuilt, down to the last nut…

On March 26, 1966, Glenn and June Anderson jumped into their 1959 Ford Thunderbird and cruised from their home in Tarzana, CA, to Cutter Ford Sales in North Hollywood. Waiting on the lot for them was a Wimbledon White 1966 Ford Mustang, which had been assembled just a month earlier in San Jose and shipped…

Back in the days before I had any real responsibilities, most of my weekends slipped by in the garage. In those days, daylight turned to dark unnoticed, as I spun wrenches on my ’66 Chevy. Sometimes I’d stop to eat. My neighborhood, like many of yours, was built out of car waypoints. For those of…

I’m about to do something I know I shouldn’t do. I’m going to ignore my own advice. ACC’s Dodge Viper GTS ACR has been a staple in the garage since we bought it. It was minty fresh when it rolled off the enclosed carrier at ACC headquarters in 2014, bought for $42,500 with just 1,200…

I’ve been following the classic car auction scene on a daily basis for more than a decade now. During that time, I’ve seen a lot of ups and downs in values — the most notable being the housing crash of 2008 that blew the floor out of the then-booming muscle car market and turned seven-figure…