A few Saturdays ago, my dad called me up. “Just bought a brand new Silverado and I need a lift to the dealership to pick it up. Can you help me out?”
No problem.
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Jim’s Blog: When Newer Isn’t Better
Jim’s Blog
Jim’s Blog: What’s Your Winter Project?
It’s easy to imagine a car person sitting wistfully by the window, watching rain or snow falling from the sky and dreaming of sunny two-lane roads. But we all know that’s not exactly how it goes.
No, car people in the colder parts of the U.S. use winter to their advantage. Read More
Jim’s Blog: Tending the Fire
Winter is coming soon, and while most collector cars are getting put away, others are getting put to work. For my 1972 Chevy truck, when the leaves start falling, it’s firewood time.
Executive Editor Chester Allen’s lovely wife Heather owns a fruit orchard in Sundale, Washington. For a couple of years now, Chester has Read More
Jim’s Blog: When is it Time to Sell?
When it comes to your pride and joy, most of us think of the term “sell” as a four-letter word. But it’s a reality many of us face, and while the decision may not always be an easy one, sometimes it’s a necessary one. So how do you decide when it’s the right time?
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Jim’s Blog: Cruising That Smartphone
Here at ACC, we spend a lot of time talking about the next generation, and for good reason: our kids are the future of our old car hobby. But the one thing that always seems to come up when older car guys start talking about kids is, frankly, something I’m tired of hearing about: the smartphone. The sentiment is almost always the same: today’s kids are too busy using their Read More
Jim’s Blog: First Car or Best Car?
My ’66 Caprice is ready to go whenever I want to use it. Trouble is, the realities of everyday life with a small kid, a job on the other side of town, and the finicky nature of a snarling carbureted big block limit how much I can use the car. So it sits in my garage, waiting for me to find time to spend on it.
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Jim’s Blog: When do you DIY?
Old American cars are hard to kill. Park your Chevrolet or Ford for a year or so and you’ll see what I mean. Other than a dead battery, I’m willing to bet nothing bad will have happened, save for maybe some stale fuel. Charge it up, clean out the tank, and you’ll be on the road again.
But even Read More
Jim’s Blog: The Next Big Thing?
The Monterey auctions are done, with $395m in total sales this year. And out of all of the high-end events and multi-million dollar cars that sold, one of the trends I noticed was increased interest in later-model supercars, such as the Ferrari Testarossa, Lamborghini Countach and Porsche 930.
I’ve always looked at Monterey as one of several annual market Read More
Jim’s Blog: On to California!
Monterey Car Week is here — one of the biggest events on the American auction calendar. Today through Sunday night, over 1,200 high-end classic cars will cross the auction blocks of seven different auction houses, all set up in different spots on the Monterey peninsula. But the big news isn’t how many cars will be offered, but instead how much money, in total, those cars will bring — last year saw 822 cars sell for $464m, with an average sales Read More
Jim’s Blog: What’s the Best Part of a Car Project?
A few months back, I found a set of original steel wheels for my 1972 Chevrolet K10 pickup. In the time since, I had them soda blasted, welded up scar on one of them, and had them primed and painted white. Then I hunted a set of proper hubcaps for them at the Portland Swapmeet in April, and spent a week of evenings in May restoring those caps Read More