My 16-year-old daughter started to drive this summer. This means borrowing the family car. So, I started finding myself car-less more often. I took this as a good reason to embark on another used-car buying odyssey. Odysseus was gone for 20 years, but I took just three days. I wound […]
SCM Spotlight talks with Tabetha Hammer, President and CEO of America’s Automotive Trust
There once was a time when the automotive calendar went quiet after Monterey Car Week. Not so any longer. In the months of August, September and October, we now have several top-flight but very different events to look forward to and attend. I’ve recently returned from my second time at […]
1984 Mazda RX-7 #55358. S/N JM1FB331XE0801486. 17k miles. “1.1-liter 12A rotary, 5-speed manual transmission, Tender Blue Metallic, brown leather upholstery, aftermarket body kit and spoiler, sunroof, AM/FM cassette stereo, air conditioning, dual Weber carburetors, Racing Beat header and exhaust system, 15-inch Weds wheels, Tokico shocks, Eibach springs.” Condition: 1. SOLD […]
My love affair with Citroëns started 50 years ago in San Francisco. I was 20 years old and in between studying intellectual history at Reed College in Portland and dance at The Juilliard School in New York City. I had decided to spend a few months with my grandmother, Dorel, […]
Bonhams sold Ferrari 250 GTO #3851GT at its 2014 Quail Lodge auction for $38,115,000, including buyer’s premium. It was a world-record sale — the highest price ever obtained at an auction. One would expect Bonhams’ staff and the seller to be high-fiving after the hammer fell. Instead, the seller sued […]
If you’re of the age when new 1960s sports cars were on your bedroom posters, you surely remember Mr. Peabody. A Saturday morning cartoon favorite, this polymath dog and his pet boy, Sherman, used a time-traveling machine called the WABAC to go on entertaining and educational adventures. Because I’m a […]
The oil crisis of the 1970s frowned heavily on Mazda’s gas-guzzling rotary engines. Under constant development since licensure from NSU in 1961, the enormously expensive rotary-engine program had placed Mazda on the brink of financial ruin. The future looked bleak when Mazda’s largest creditor, Sumitomo Bank, inserted its own corporate […]
The SCM 2006 Lotus Elise had not seen much action recently. It had been moved about in the storage garage to make more room for other cars and driven short distances, but it had been a few years since it had been truly exercised. The letter from the State of […]
Part of the chatter that surrounds online auctions is the ability of non-certified viewers (“trolls”) to make authoritative comments. I was selling a Mercedes 220 Ponton online one time, and bidding was going along nicely. Suddenly a troll opined, “Do you know the heater boxes on those are lined with […]
Sign up for a free weekly insider's report on the collector car market — and get a free gift.