When I start fidgeting around wondering which car I should get next, my friends call it “car knitting.” Currently, I’ve got a tidy, tightly focused collection of Alfas, ranging from a 1958 Giulietta Sprint Veloce to a 1967 Duetto. All the cars are in fine fettle or approaching it. The […]
The email arrived on July 1, 2016. It was from my oldest and dearest friend, Bjarne Holm: Hi Keith. Bad news on the health front. I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer early last month. My prognosis is a few months to a few years, depending on how I respond to […]
Each August and September, the collector car world hits high gear. Everything that happens before just anticipates the explosion of activities that mark the end of summer. Normally, this is a busy time for me — and the gang at SCM. But this year, hectic, frenetic and “my hair was […]
The pundits didn’t wait for the Monterey Car Week auctions to end before weighing in with banshee-like wails of market distress. “Saturday night auctions fail to meet 2015 levels” The Los Angeles Times headlined before the Gooding auction on Sunday. Bloomberg weighed in on Monday, “Monterey Auctions Continue to Slide […]
Each year, this issue falls in the lull just before the great Super Bowl contest that is Monterey Car Week. Each of the auction companies on the Peninsula has its lineups set. All the seven- and eight-figure, market-defining cars have been extensively promoted and the potential bidders courted. Within a […]
According to Jerry Tilley, captain of the Aleutian Ballad, a crab boat featured in TV’s “The Deadliest Catch,” the scene in which a 60-foot rogue wave catches his 107-foot boat broadsides and flips it onto its beam end is one of the most-watched excerpts of the hit show on YouTube, […]
It was just three months ago when, in this column, I pompously and piously pronounced that I would never again drive at excess speeds on a public highway. I referred to the 140 mph I had averaged testing the Ford GT in 2006. Two days later the call from Lamborghini […]
It was two years ago that we watched our 1967 Volvo 122S arrive on a car hauler from Madison, WI. And now we’re going to watch it leave. Owning the Amazon has been a delightful and enlightening experience. It was a good car when it arrived (unlike so many of […]
As you read this, the 2006 Lotus Elise that we sold in May of 2013 is in a car transporter and headed from Connecticut back to SCM World Headquarters in Portland, OR. We first drove an Elise in 2009; Legal Files contributor John Draneas has one. We were entranced. Weighing […]
What do a 1968 Ford GT40 Mk III, a 1967 Porsche 911S, a 1972 4.9 Ghibli Spider SS, a Toyota 2000GT, a 1972 Ferrari 246 GT and a 1968 DeTomaso Mangusta prototype have in common? These are exotics with 6- and 8-cylinder engines placed in the front, middle and rear […]
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