My mom drove a Mercedes until I had to take her keys away - it replaced another Mercedes and a series of BMW’s starting with a 2002 back in the 1970's. Now that I’m embracing my senior status (I’ll be 73 this year) I’m pretty happy with my Defender 110 and Miata ND2 as the daily drivers and three older Land Rovers as…

My dad was fairly conservative when it came to cars but every once in a while he would surprise us with something a little out of the box. For some reason he brought home a 1960 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider in the mid-sixties when I was 14 years old. It was the very first car I drove (a short drive around the block…

Order a new wiring harness from Autosparks in the UK for around $500 - rip all of the old one out and install new one - easily done. I just got my new harness for my old Land Rover from them - figured it would be a lot easier and cleaner than trying to patch a brittle 55 year old wiring harness back together. The…

I have a first edition Dune as well - never noticed the publisher before!

I didn’t drive a Miata until three years ago when we were out in Monterey for car week. After six days and over 600 miles in a rented Miata - all of them with the top down - I decided I needed one of these. The southern end of Carmel Valley Road is a narrow, twisted strip of asphalt that winds through the golden…

A good friend of mine drove a 1964 Valiant for over forty years and put hundreds of thousands of miles on it. It was a very faded blue two door that looked very much like yours. These cars are truly unkillable.

I wasn’t going to buy a Miata - until I rented an ND for car week out in Monterey a few years ago - now I own an orange 30AE model. If we could have had one of these as a teenager back in the 1960's, we would have been in sports car heaven. Its a huge amount of fun for the price - and at six feet tall I fit in one.…

George was a real character and a great promoter - I met him a couple of times - but the real unappreciated aspect of his life was the vast library of photographs that he took of the Custom Car Culture all through the fifties and sixties. He was actually a very good photographer and shot thousands of photographs…

Grypmats are great! I had to come up with something similar for our aircraft mechanics to protect wing surfaces from tools and to keep them from sliding off the edge of a wing or T-tail. When you are working on a C-5B that’s a 65 foot drop to the ground. Grypmats are better than the padded non-slip tray I came up with…

My very first car - that my dad bought for me for my seventeenth birthday - for $50. Dad drove it the twelve miles home from where he bought it and that was the farthest it moved under its own power for the next eight months. I learned to never leave the driveway without a tow rope in the trunk because it was usually…

Renault Dauphine - 850cc 27 HP (on a good day - and there was never a good day to own a Renault Dauphine)

I was around 12 years old in 1963 when I saw the first one of these - we had a Ford Country Squire wagon but this thing just grabbed my imagination and has never let it go - I guess that’s why I’ve owned 19 of them...

Not only that but my sister and I drove it non-stop from Atlanta to Hartford in a little under 24 hours up I-85 and I-95. I was on my way to northern Connecticut to visit a girlfriend I hadn’t seen all summer. My sister was going up to visit one of her artist friends in Hartford. After dropping her off I drove a…

I had one back in the late 1970's - it was a fun car as long as the weather was warm. I drove it on a trip from Atlanta - Hartford, CT - Detroit - Nashville - Atlanta in the fall of 1978 It was fun driving through New York City with the top down. I got a lot of funny reactions in Detroit - nobody knew exactly what it…

Yes, yes you do - that would be very cool.

I’ve got a 110 on order with the 295 HP 4 cylinder gas engine since I didn’t want the added complication of the MHEV system. My 2017 Discovery TD6 diesel has been an outstanding vehicle and I was hoping we would get the 6 cylinder diesel in this country but apparently JLRNA is not interested in bringing in the diesel…

One of the guys in my high school (back in 1968) had one of the original Hemi-Darts - cool car! Yours looks great. Another friend had a 1969 Swinger 340 which we did many foolish things in as teenagers.

My second car SHOULD have been the 1957 Porsche Speedster that I found for sale for only $600 (in 1969) but I only had $400 saved up and my dad wouldn’t LOAN me the $200 I needed to buy the Porsche. So I wound up with a 1965 Corvair Corsa convertible with the 180 HP turbocharged engine - that had dropped a valve seat…

The Renault Dauphine carries its spare tire in the same location but its behind a drop down door below the front bumper - where the number plate is on this example.

The Varsity on North Avenue in Atlanta, Georgia - founded in 1928 and still serving red steaks (hamburgers with ketchup), chili dogs and FO’s (Frosted Orange) to this day. Generations of Atlanta teenagers have driven their cars to the Varsity on Saturday night to hang out. Nipsey Russell got his start as a car hop at…