We just put 1,611 delightful miles on our 1965 Giulia Spider Veloce. It was our first real road trip in years, and it brought home the reasons we fool around with these old cars.

The occasion was the Alfa Romeo National Convention, held in Rohnert Park, CA, south of Santa Rosa. Good friend Doug Hartman was my co-pilot on the way down, and Wendie flew down to ride with me on the way back.

We’ve owned the Spider nearly 30 years, selling it once and buying it back during that period. Conrad Stevenson in Berkeley did the engine and transmission several years ago, Bill Gillham oversaw the redo of the interior using original materials sourced by Matt Jones, and Tom Black put the finishing touches on preserving the aged paint. In short, it has never run nor looked better.

The trip down was uneventful. Our convoy of Northwest Alfas drove Interstate 5 to Eugene, Highway 126 across to Florence, then 101 to Santa Rosa with an overnight in Eureka. All the Alfas performed well except for a 750 Giulietta Spider that lost its water pump in Eureka; it was towed to the convention, repaired and driven home.

I’ve known most of these club guys for decades, and we remarked on how much better prepared our cars were than in the 1980s. As they have evolved into collectible artifacts, we have started lavishing unprecedented amounts of care and money on their maintenance.

I’ve never counted the number of cars that have passed through my garage over the past four decades, but they’ve numbered in the hundreds. They’ve ranged from mundane 1965 MGBs to exquisite Maserati 3500 GTs. Sometimes there have been 20 cars at my place, other times just one. Fishing for […]

If the collector-car market were a cappuccino, its frothy foam would spill over the sides of the cup and cascade to the tabletop like a miniature Niagara Falls. Is there a major auction that doesn’t set a few world records? Even Toyotas are now worth more than a million dollars. […]

Dear Keith: Now that I’ve purchased the SCM Volvo 1800ES and it’s on the way to my garage, I’d like to ask your opinion on a 356C sunroof coupe that’s been offered to me. I’ve taken a quick look at it, and it appears to be a really nice older […]

We’ve seen more gators than ducks or beavers recently, as we’ve spent 20 of the past 30 days in Florida, with our home state of Oregon becoming more of an imagined entity than a place.

We had barely unpacked our bags from our February trip to Rétromobile when it was time for another early-morning taxi to PDX. Our ultimate destination was the Boca Raton Concours d’Elegance, but we thought we’d sneak in a side trip to a resort in the Bahamas for a non-car-related vacation. (Such a thing exists for the Martin family? I can already see you shaking your box-end wrenches in disbelief.)

Atlantis, as the resort was called, was an exercise in fantasy — especially if you are 5-year-old Bradley Martin and get to feed manta rays and swim with dolphins. One of the mega-yachts docked at the resort was named “Never Again III.” I’m sure every SCMer has cars they would christen the same.

Just weeks ago I was toodling through the Arizona desert, sneaking away from the auctions for a quick drive to Sedona in a lovely dark blue Aston Martin V8 Vantage. I was seeking a brief respite from the ceaseless shattering of world records at the auctions being held, where one […]

I remember clearly when I decided to launch the Alfa Romeo Market Letter. It was 1988, and the market was beginning to heat up. I had recently left my day job as a manager of Ron Tonkin’s Gran Turismo in Portland, OR, where I sold Ferraris, Maseratis, Alfa Romeos and […]

As this is our December issue, it’s the right time to reflect on the past 12 months, and to project forward into 2013.

Sports Car Market is by design a reflective magazine; we report on sales and events that have happened, and analyze and comment on them. Our world is large and all-inclusive, as we imagine yours is. You’ll find us at the most exclusive catalog auctions — as well as sales where decrepit trucks are sold by the pound.

What all of us at SCM — subscribers, contributors and staff — have in common is a delight in old cars, from their brilliant styling to their misguided mechanicals. We glory in their imperfections, we swap tales about how they let us down, and we believe that after reading Thor Thorson’s latest encomium about an Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 or Porsche 917/10, we have become instant experts on the subject — of course!

But SCM’s primary focus has always been the market. What’s selling, where, for how much, and why. We continue to be the only magazine that offers firsthand reports from trained analysts, with exclusive photos, chassis numbers, hands-on descriptions and informed analysis. You can expect even more in the future, as our Platinum database is revved up to accept multiple photos, videos and direct feeds from the auction houses for upcoming sales.

Our Executive Editor, Chester Allen, is a dedicated surfer. He tells me there is a moment when a paddling surfrider catches the pulse of energy traveling through the water, pops up on the board and starts the ride — accelerating effortlessly as he becomes part of a wave.

This year, every auction house in Monterey had its own waves. Some bigger than others, some faster than others, and some breaking sooner or later than others. And on the face of every wave were bidders, in fierce competition, racing each other to be the last man standing when the wave crashed to shore — and stepping onto the beach as the new owner of the car of their dreams.

  Fifty years ago, Bob Russell was driving home from work when a flashy red sports car caught his eye. “I had been thinking that we needed a second car, and my wife needed to learn to drive a stick,” Russell, 84, said. “So I just bought it.” He brought […]