Shifting Gears

Government-Created Collectibles

At every car club meeting, gray-haired elders debate the future of car collecting. They wonder if the current generation will wean itself from texting and playing World of Warcraft long enough to learn to use a Uni-Syn to balance their SU carburetors, or feeler gauges to measure valve clearances. They […]

Pleasure and Punishment, Collector Car Style

With this February issue, we are now well into the 22nd year of Sports Car Market. Twenty-two is my lucky number. My birthday falls on the 22nd, and my race cars have always been numbered 22. When we first started SCM in our basement, as the four-page mimeographed Alfa Romeo […]

Five Steps to Smart Collecting

In the collector car world, January is Arizona time. Last year, in an economic atmosphere that seemed considerably more bleak, 1,726 cars went to new owners, and $133m changed hands. This year, I predict we’ll see a slight uptick in sales, perhaps 10%. If the surprising strength of the recent […]

Quirky Trumps Practical

For the past three months, I’ve managed to use the SCM 1964 Volvo 544 as my primary family car, and as my daily driver. I’ve put just over 2,000 miles on it. In September, my wife Wendie and I and our two-year-old Bradley piled into it for the 400-mile round-trip […]

Steady as She Goes

Every week, we send out the “SCM Insider” email, chock full of breaking news, auction results, select videos, and a reader poll to more than 30,000 rabid collectors like you. Our question in the June 30 newsletter asked readers to choose one of four outcomes for the 2009 Monterey weekend. […]

Assisted Suicide, Clunker Style

Over the next few months, nearly 750,000 clunkers are going to be scrapped. Not dismantled, mind you, but smashed and melted into their base, formative materials. Whether or not this is good government policy we’ll leave to our friends at The Economist. And others can debate the relative environmental effects; […]

Pebble Beach, 2020

Each year, we call this our “Pebble Beach” issue. We wrap it up about one month before the Monterey week, and through the coordination of our printer and the trucking companies, copies magically appear at nearly every Monterey venue, from the Lodge at Pebble Beach to Concorso Italiano. By its […]

Predilections and Predictions

July is an oddly quiet month in the collector car world. While there are auctions going on, vintage car shamans are still picking apart the results of the RM Maranello ($28.4m), Bonhams Monaco ($6.2m), and Mecum Indy ($33.6m) sales. And through those results, they are attempting to cast their stones […]

Something Old, Something New

It’s been nearly ten years since I last drove in the California Mille. Dodge was the primary sponsor then, and I enjoyed the Northern California countryside from behind the wheel of a Viper. After growing up driving Alfas, with their puny 4-cylinder, 80-ci engines, mashing the throttle on a 450-horsepower, […]

From Occupation to Recreation

The Grays Harbor Indoor Professional Rodeo is a three-day event, and includes Bronc Riding, Bull Riding, Calf Roping, Breakaway Roping, Steer Wrestling, Team Roping, Barrel Racing, and more. My wife’s father has a race-engine shop outside Elma, Washington, where the rodeo is held. Located between Olympia and Aberdeen in central-western […]