The cockpit swathed us in leather-trimmed functionality; ancillary systems like heating and coolant temperature control were just afterthoughts “Have you noticed the oil streak that runs across the golf course and ends up under your Alfa?” That was the comment I was greeted with as I ended the Monte Shelton […]
Author: Keith Martin
SCM at 20-Now a Survivor®
In 1988, I had just finished a stint as a sales manager for Ferrari dealer Ron Tonkin at his Portland Gran Turismo store, and was beginning to sell collector cars, by the container-full, to the then-hot European market. While at the GT store, I had discovered Gerald Roush’s Ferrari Market […]
Do You Know the Way to Monterey?
The Insider’s Seminar is the one time each year that SCMers can come together to discuss the state of the market and the trends to come More than 20 years have passed since my first vintage-car-themed Monterey visit. The tale below is now an oft-heard one, repeated by nearly Monterey […]
Cobras, Cobras Everywhere
“My brother and I just wanted to have a car that would always be the fastest at a stoplight drag race, and it has been” Driving a 427 Cobra with sidepipes and an open exhaust is a ticket to be the badboy you always dreamed of being in high school. […]
The Shadow of the Internet
It’s a miserable, wet, 45-degree day in Portland as I compose this. And for the first time in a decade, I have missed the 44th annual Always-in-April Portland Swap Meet. Billed as the largest event of its kind west of the Mississippi River, it claims to have over 4,200 vendor […]
The Future as History
{vsig}2008-5_2178{/vsig} As I look at these pictures of my children, Alexandra and Bradley, taken 16 years apart, I wonder what kind of automotive world they will inherit. We Baby Boomers are the last generation to experience raw, unregulated cars as daily drivers; those built from 1955 through 1974 represent a […]
The End of No Reserve
At times, being at the epicenter of a collector car weekend is like sitting in a command bunker. In Scottsdale, SCM’s boots-on-the-ground team included nearly 20 market analysts, staff, and support crew. During the weekend, they fanned out to all the events, notebooks and cameras in hand, and began submitting […]
The Swede Meets the Italian
If I worked in a regular job, I would surely be fired for sendingand receiving so many links about collectible cars for sale First, I’d like to thank SCMers Craig Wood, of Brighton, Michigan, and Donald Sanders, of Durham, North Carolina, for being so quick to respond. When I wrote […]
Leaving 1990 in the Dust
In my 20 years of writing about the market, I have never seen high-end cars accelerate in value like this For the first time in two decades, we’re considering pulling a tattered banner out of storage and hoisting it above SCM world headquarters. It bears the fabled words of Monterey […]
Mucking out the SCM Stable
We began to wonder if the BMW had had some conjugal visits with our failure-prone Fiat 2100 and been the recipient of its DNA You might think that with all the transactions we track, and all the conversations we have, the principals at SCM world headquarters would make nothing but […]