A friend inherited from her father the large and long 1929 Packard convertible (I’m not sure if it was a Sport Phaeton or maybe a 7-seat Touring) her grandfather had purchased new. But I do remember that she figured it cost her more than $200 every time she took it out of the garage to a parade or car show.
Cleaning and post-drive touching up and such is part of the cost of membership in the collector car hobby, whether you bought or inherited your vintage vehicle.
And the point is this: Is $20 or $200 or even $2,000 too much to pay for the fun that comes with owning and driving your car?
Which brings me to this: Don’t be put off by the fact that Keith Martin’s Sports Car Market 2019 Year in Review book costs $1 per page (OK, so it’s actually $1.01 for each of the 99 pages, but that doesn’t include the book’s hard cover or the end papers.)
The book is something of an experiment for Martin and his Sports Car Market (and American Car Collector) magazine staffs and contributors. In those 99 pages, Martin and company look back at the year’s major auctions, concours, show and tours in formerly unpublished words and pictures.
But that’s not all. There’s a feature in which various contributors write about “The One That Got Away,” cars (and a tractor) not purchased and now regretted. There’s also a feature on several contributor’s favorite drives of 2019, including one off-pavement.
There’s another section in which various experts offer their suggestions on what to acquire, to dump or to hold in 2020 — and some of their suggestions likely will surprise you.
The book ends with an essay from Simon Kidston explaining what happened, and why, in the collector car marketplace in 2019.
There also are auction sales charts, full-page and even wider, “double truck” images that will either revive memories of places you went, or perhaps they will convince you not to wait any longer and to make your New Year’s Resolutions to be there in 2020.
And if you do go in 2020, hope that this Martin and company experiment is successful and that there’s another edition covering the 2020 Year in Review. You’ll enjoy reliving the year through the team’s words and pictures.
Reviewed
Keith Martin’s Sports Car Market 2019 Year in Review
By Keith Martin and the SCM staff
Sports Car Market, 2019
Hard cover, 99 pages
