The 2006 North American International Auto Show in Detroit heralded the return of the car. As gas prices soar, customers are looking for-and manufacturers are competing to offer-products that are decidedly European in flavor. Compact size, styling, affordability, efficiency, and performance all seemed equal parts of the equation, and were […]

If knowledge is power, SCMers are about to become an even more formidable group of collectors. The information on all 40,000 cars in our database will soon be available to you 24/7, from anywhere in the world, via your handheld devices.Starting at the Scottsdale auctions in January, anyone with a […]

What makes a car collectible? And what makes one car more desirable than another? We all might agree that a 1967 911S is more desirable that a 1977, but exactly why? At SCM, we have long felt there was a need for an evaluation and rating system for collectible cars […]

Just after Monterey, I got a call that delighted the enthusiast in me, and terrified what remains of the sensible adult. In 1995, I sold one of my favorite cars, a 1965 Alfa Giulia Spider Veloce, to Ken Metzger, a friend in Belvedere, CA, for $22,000. Now, a decade later, […]

I took the SCM 1963 Corvette split-window out for a spin last week, a shake-down for this year’s running of the Monte Shelton Northwest Classic Rally.I stopped to pick up my good friend Steve Sargent, who, although not a full-bore car guy, does drive a four-cylinder BMW Z3 convertible in […]

Alfa Romeo is the featured marque at a variety of events in Monterey this year, so sprinkled throughout this issue you’ll find a focus on Alfas. Putting all this stuff together had me itching to write yet another chapter in my long saga with the marque, so last week I […]

I drove to Seattle on a Saturday morning in a 2006 BMW 325i, and by the time I returned the following day I was behind the wheel of a 1977 AMC Pacer wagon. And yes, it was by choice.The BMW is a fine car, with a pleasing appearance less Bangle-ized […]

The first issue of SCM roared off the presses (or more accurately, was spit out of a mimeograph machine) in 1988. We were just in time to ride the upsurge in the market through its crest in early 1990.I was buying and selling sports and imports at the time, and […]

It’s time we all stopped pretending. For all intents and purposes, the last collectible serial production car rolled off the assembly line sometime in the mid-1970s.SCM has long maintained that the 1955-73 period will be regarded as the Golden Age of collectible cars, when the automotive equivalents of Van Gogh, […]

The 1974 Mustang II, by nearly any standard, was a pathetic shadow of the original. It was also a terrific sales success, its 384,000 units sold far outstripping the 134,267 of the 1973, final-year, “Big Mustang.”The reason Mustang IIs flew out of the showroom was simple. Gas prices zoomed as […]