It was a regular day in SCM Old Car Land. It started with a call to Chip Starr, who is bringing our 1972 Mercedes 250C back to life. He has installed the Weber DGVs and the Pertronix ignition. He swapped out the rear end for one from a 300D, along […]
It was a humid spring day in 1992. I was standing at a rent-a-car kiosk in Fort-de-France, Martinique. We had decided to take a family vacation to the Caribbean. My daughter Alexandra was less than a year old. We expected terrific French food in addition to the delights of the […]
Bradley and I had two road trips in a week. First, we drove to Astoria, on the Oregon Coast. We took the 1991 Alfa Spider and he drove about 100 miles. This being springtime in Oregon, we drove through a hailstorm. The combination of the scenic, winding Highway 26 and […]
Last week I asked for your help in paring down my collection from 11 to 3 cars. While I am not planning on selling anything in the near future, 11 cars means 11 batteries to keep charged, 11 cars to run to the ethanol-free gas station, and 11 cars to […]
It’s getting to be time to prune the collection. At the moment, we have 11 cars in the SCM fleet, including my daily driver Hyundai Elantra. Eight are on the button, and three are in the midst of mild mechanical refurbishments. For sheer ease of management — and perhaps to […]
“If it’s not really the car you are looking for, pass on it and keep looking.” Those were Miles Collier’s words to me as I was engulfed by the red mist. I was at a Silver auction in Portland when I spotted a handsome 1969 Alfa Romeo Spider. I recall […]
Starting when I was three years old, my grandfather would perch me on the nose of his Ford 9N tractor. It was a ritual we repeated every Saturday morning at our family’s small farm in Novato, California (about 28 miles north of our home in San Francisco). My engagement with […]
A few months ago, my son Bradley turned 15. He passed the written test and then I signed him up for lessons for street driving from a professional. In the teacher’s Honda CR-V, he had several sessions navigating local streets, and a couple of stints on freeways. Now it was […]
What do you think the ideal cutoff date for a vintage tour should be? Or should there be one at all? The cutoff for the SCM 1000 is 1974. We chose that year as stringent smog and safety regulations began to take effect on US cars in 1975, altering the […]
Over the last two weeks, I’ve begun telling the story of the newest addition to the SCM fleet. I bought a 1975 911 S Sportomatic from the Hershey swap meet corral last October. The car was represented as having 47,000 original miles. It was originally purchased from Holbert Porsche in […]
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