Like most of you, I’m a car addict. I spend most of my time thinking about cars, or working on cars, or thinking about working on cars. But not this week.
My wife and I just welcomed a baby girl into our household — Emma Jane Pickering, born 9/2/17 — and she’s shoved the car stuff in my life out of the way to make room for her 6-lb 1-oz self. I couldn’t be happier.
I’ll be back with a Read More
The Monterey auctions and events, otherwise known as “Car Week,” are a tradition for me — I’ve been going to these events for years, first for Sports Car Market, and since 2011, for American Car Collector as well. But this year was different. While the SCM and ACC team headed south for Pebble Beach last week, I stayed at ACC HQ.
My wife’s about to have a baby — our second — and she still likes to talk about how Read More
ACC’s Viper GTS ACR Coupe has been a great car — in the few years we’ve owned it, we’ve covered a bunch of miles in it with no trouble — all it’s needed other than oil changes and periodic cleaning was a set of tires. But we’ll be putting it up for sale soon, as it’s time for us to buy another classic car. What should we get?
I’ve got two different thoughts here. First, for our ACC Wrenching columns, Read More
Last Friday, I took a day off work and spent it at my dad’s house, wrenching on his 1968 Camaro. The car is in the absolute final stages of reassembly after restoration, so we worked on things like adjusting the hood fit, wiring the dash gauges, installing the front bumper, and bolting in the driver’s seat. At the end of the afternoon, we dumped five gallons of gas in the tank and rolled the car outside. And then, finally, after Read More
When it comes to classic cars, buying is the easy part — just lay down the cash and take home your new prize. Hopefully your significant other is on-board and you’ve got a place to keep the new car — but those are only details, right? We can work them out later.
Selling, on the other hand, is a lot more involved. Why? Because if you’re like me, you get attached to the cars you own, even if only Read More
When I was building my ’72 Chevy truck, I kept the engine and drivetrain as stock as possible, all the way down to the original rebuilt Q-jet carburetor. Why mess with something that worked?
But there have been huge leaps in technology made in the decades since 1972, and it’s trickled into the old car world. Modern carburetors, roller cams, polyurethane bushings, and more have made it possible to turn our old cars into modern/classic hybrids. These modern parts can Read More
The 1980s brought us a lot of things, but for a certain generation of car people, the most important of those things was the VCR.
When the VCR became commonplace in the American household, kids could all of a sudden watch movies or recorded TV over and over again — and that’s exactly what we did. For a lot of us, interest in and availability of content turned minor fascination into full-on obsession.
Those household VCRs were where a lot Read More
I’ve always been a car guy, but the drive got even more serious when I got my driving permit and finally slid behind the wheel of an actual car. A few spins in my sister’s ’95 Dodge Neon had me circling classic car ads in the local paper for cooler options. My father, also a car guy, became my unwilling-but-coerced partner and financier in my hunt for a classic.
First up was a 1961 Chevrolet Impala in Fawn Beige and white Read More
A friend of mine called me a few weeks back to shoot some photos of a GTO out in the weeds on his property. After years and years of an “I’ll build it someday” mentality, he’s finally decided that it’s just never going to happen. Time to sell the GTO while there’s still some GTO left to sell.
Some car people see nothing but possibility in the image above — it’s got the Endura bumper and was a factory 4-speed Read More
I got my Caprice sitting right on a set of QA1 coilovers in the front, added a set of big-as-possible 275-series rubber in the back, and have a great-sounding BBC with a 236/245 duration roller cam with .625/.639 inches of lift cackling through a set of three-inch Flowmasters. But there’s one thing missing, and that one thing is a chrome Hurst stick and a white ball.
The car is a factory big-block car with a Turbo 400 automatic I Read More