Why don't you ask the person who does the research?
Yeah.
Well, you've got headphones.
Yeah.
Exactly.
You're hearing what's going on.
No, I'm tuning it out.
And it's got a Holley Terminator EFI, which is so cool because carburetors can be persnickered-y.
Yeah.
And all these new Holley, different carburetor manufacturers where Holley or Edelbrock
are not just now making these electronic fuel injectors that are just bolt-on,
right?
Well, it's a little more complicated than that.
Is that kind of like when I say that, oh, you want to get vintage air for this?
It's like two grand.
They're like, it's not two grand.
The unit's more than two grand.
Wow.
And then you've got the labor.
And wiring.
Yeah.
You don't say two grand, Stuart.
Stuart, you say that with some tone.
Anyway, the Chevelle is pretty darn cool.
2016 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat.
You've got to imagine when Chrysler Dodge-Stelanus, whoever was coming up with this name,
do you think that they went back and forth about calling something a Hellcat?
Do you think that had to be a lot of push and pull and fighting and give and take?
Are you sure we won't?
I don't think there was any middle ground.
No.
They're either like, no.
Or wow.
Or wow.
How cool would that be?
When you were in LA, did you do these research groups where you get paid to sit in on a
table?
I loved that.
I did some car ones.
I'm sure they had some research.
What do they call that?
Research?
I don't know.
Focus group.
Focus group.
Focus group.
Focus group.
And sit around a table and they show you commercials and stuff.
I did it with a couple of commercials and I did it with a couple of cars.
I don't even remember what the cars were.
It was like a Plymouth Velare.
I don't know if that's still around, but it was a thing for actors to do when they're
out of work.
It was a big network.
Well, my friend who owned Beverly Hills budget rental car, Jerry Siemens, owned a company
that did testing and research and would fly people to their track in Michigan somewhere
up there.
They would put them up for a couple of days to get their feedback on cars and the competitor's
cars, but he had the coolest rental car company in the world.
He was renting Exotics before anybody else was in Beverly Hills.
We became friends with him so we'd go out there and he'd give us something cool to
drive.
It wouldn't be a Ferrari or anything, but one year the brand new car was the Lexus LS430.
He gave us one in black and we were driving down Sunset Strip and we got more thumbs
up and more people high-fiving that car than anybody, any car we'd ever driven.
It was just like people thought that was the coolest thing.
It was cool because every time we go it's something different.
Other new arrival is the, well, I didn't talk about the Hellcat, Plum Crazy Pearl over
black, 1,800 actual miles, one owner, 707 horsepower, 6.2 liter MEV8, Tremac 6-speed
showroom fresh.
Last but not least, I love this car, 1960 Chevrolet Impala convertible, Irmine
White over black and white, 348, 3-2s, 3-2 Barrel Carburetors, Turbo Glide Automatic,
AAC-8, National First Place, beautiful car, beautifully restored.
I think we're working on a deal on that.
I think so.
Yeah.
And we think we've got our Mercedes V12 Twin-Turbo S65 so.
Oh, congratulations.
So we'll give you an update on that next week, assuming everything goes like it's
supposed to go.
When we return.
Do you want to talk about the auction now or do you want to talk about the
auction now?
You got time.
I got time.
Trust me, you got time.
I would know normally when the clock that's right above my eye.
I know.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Am I pointing out?
We'll cut Keith's short.
We'll have to talk about the auction.
So the auction is over.
Oh.
Okay.
It's already over.
It's already over.
So we had a great time.
It was awesome.
Wow.
What a turnout.
What a turnout.
I'll tell you, we are.
Breakfast was a fantastic.
Fantastic.
We've got a food truck for breakfast out here.
If you're a registered bidder or consignor, you've got a great meal that now
you'll never get ever again.
We've got a great room in the holiday end.
And like when a musician would say, oh, you should have been here last night.
Eric Clapton joined us on stage.
Oh.
Gosh, thanks.
I forgot.
The late shows.
Yeah, tomorrow night, Bruce Springsteen.
Oh, thanks.
No, I'm going to be tied up tomorrow.
Oh, no.
But our auction, I tell you, the amount of people signed up on proxy bid and guy
or auction services that's here, our local auctioneer has been short of phenomenon.
I mean, we've got 88 cars and we've got probably, we'll have a thousand bidders
registered between in person and online.
Right.
And so we'll tell you next week how we did.
So hopefully it all worked out well.
So can now we go to the break?
Yeah.
Okay, thanks.
So when we return, we'll be joined by our friend Keith Martin,
publisher of Sports Car Market Magazine.
We'll be back in just a couple of minutes.
Here's a special offer from Sports Car Market Magazine.
Get a six month subscription for just $19.95 by going to SportsCarMarket.com
slash Test Drive at the number six.
That's SportsCarMarket.com slash Test Drive six.
If you're a buyer, a seller, or just general classic car enthusiast,
publisher Keith Martin says,
We've been around almost 40 years.
It's the Wall Street Journal of the collector car world.
Activate your six month trial of Sports Car Market Magazine
by going to SportsCarMarket.com slash Test Drive six.
That's SportsCarMarket.com slash Test Drive at the number six.
Offers for a limited time.
Be in the know with Sports Car Market.
This is the Classic Automall Show.
If you'd like to get more information on vehicles or anything else,
contact us by email or phone.
All the info can easily be found at ClassicAutomall.com.
And we're back with a Classic Automall Show
from the Classic Automall Studio in Morgantown, Pennsylvania.
Dear friend Keith Martin joining us via Zoom.
So editor, publisher, Sports Car...
No, publisher now.
Sports Car Market Magazine. Good morning, Keith.
Good morning. It's great to be here.
Great to have you again.
So your blog this week is...
I love the title because we all can relate to this.
Only $1,000 per mile.
That sounds like my boat ownership
except it's nautical miles so it's different.
So, you know...
You know, the rules of boats and cars and all that stuff,
rule number one is never add up what you've spent.
Exactly.
And then never divide it by like hours of track time
or miles of use.
We did that with our boat on the third time
we'd gone out on it in a year.
And when we amortized the whole thing over the year thing,
it was frightening.
A little tear came down my eye.
I know. I know.
You could have just taken that money and gone to Paris.
Yeah, exactly.
Or probably had somebody you could probably rent a boat,
have them bring it from Florida to your house,
go out in the water for a couple hours
and they take it back to Florida and still be cheaper.
You'd be way ahead.
Way, way ahead.
So, you did the 40 mile drive,
put on by the Jaguar Owners Club of Oregon,
the J-O-C-O.
Jaco.
Jaco. How was that?
Well, Jaco sounds like the name of a train chimpanzee.
Jaco. He's a good boy.
The drive was good but it really made me think,
you know, how do you get test drives in classic cars
before you own them?
You don't. That's the problem.
You really don't.
I don't know.
You and I are not going to turn people loose
with these old cars on the road.
No.
You know, as I said in my article,
when I was the GM of the Tonkin Ferrari store,
people never got to test drive a car.
Never.
Right. It wasn't allowed.
I wouldn't drive it with them sitting in it,
but they did not get to drive that car
until it was paid for.
Yeah.
Because there's too many things that can go wrong
with a car either high performance or old.
Either one of those are a recipe for disaster.
Yeah.
And luckily for us,
we have a large 25-acre asphalt parking lot
here at our place.
And we don't, but there's not many test drives.
You know, it's mostly the guys driving
to somebody around and showing them.
And every once in a while,
we'll let them just take a couple of laps
around the so-called track.
But, you know,
if the guy wants to take it out on the turnpike,
we can't allow that to happen.
It's just too much risk and too much liability.
There's too many things can go wrong.
Even if it wasn't the guy driving its fault.
I mean, if the transmission just goes out,
it may or may not have been his fault,
but it's going to be blamed on him because he's driving it.
Well, I think Stuart, the way you start,
as I mentioned,
first see if people can fit into a car.
You know what?
I'm going to turn this off.
That's hilarious.
Well, while you're turning that off,
I'll tell you that we've lost more sales
to non-fitters.
And either them physically can't fit in it
or it's too damn long for their garage.
Yep.
I think about Italian cars from the 50s and 60s
were built for people who were about 5'8".
Yeah.
Svelte comes into mind when I talk about this.
And that's just so you need to go sit.
Can you fit in the car?
Sure.
Yeah.
Is it comfortable?
Can you fit in it?
Do you feel comfortable?
Because if you don't feel comfortable just sitting there,
you're damn sure not going to feel comfortable driving it.
Right, right, right.
And it's tricky.
These old cars are tricky because if you,
you know, things can go wrong.
We've sold a car to a guy and literally he
shipped it out to the West Coast.
And about a month later, the fuel pump went out
and he was mad.
And I said, how would I ever know that?
How can I ever predict that that's going to happen?
Hey, so Stuart, you and I are sitting
at the Jaguar factory in 1963.
And so we talked to the head technician
and we say, now 50 years from now,
what do you think Michael will run with this car?
He just slapped you.
He just slapped the crap out of you.
He told you to get out of his shop.
I know.
And we're dealing with things that are so far
past their original design life.
Right.
That you end up with failures of things
that you never thought would fail.
Yeah.
How come the air vent just came out of its axis
and fell onto the ground and it's $180
for the part and three and a half hours of labor
to put it back in?
Oh, I understand.
I understand.
It's like that.
You know, it's true that knowing what's going
to fail and all that.
Yes.
I mean, a warranted car is one thing
and they do their best to make them last however many years
they need to last three or four or whatever it is.
But it's certainly hard to predict.
And even if a car is seemingly in perfect condition,
how many times have we all driven a car
and we parked it, we came back out the next morning
and there was something wrong
and it had no indication of that being wrong
the day before when we parked it?
Right.
I agree.
How do you know that?
I just was having some problems with my alpha
with the charging system
and it turned out that the super duper
duracell battery somebody put in it
that had it after three years,
it had a cell that was dead.
Right.
Yeah.
And it was impossible to, it would sit,
you would pull into a gas station idle for five minutes
and your battery would be dead.
Oh my God.
That's so frustrating too
because it's one of those things,
it's like a broken fuel gauge.
There's nothing worse in an old car
than a fuel gauge that doesn't work.
It just drives me absolutely crazy
because you know you're going to mess up.
You know you're going to forget that the fuel gauge
is not working and you're going to end up somewhere
you don't want to be with no fuel.
Well, you know, with my alpha, the fuel gauge,
it starts flickering on the yellow empty light,
starts flickering at three-quarter full.
You better hurry.
You're constantly in fear.
Yeah.
I don't, fear is not a good look for me.
No, but fear is part of what goes
into classic car tours.
Oh yeah, yeah.
You see, even on the big ones like the Colorado Grans
and the stuff that you guys do and all those,
there's fear because first of all,
something can go wrong in the middle of nowhere
that you won't have a part for.
Or even worse, you know, these cars aren't as steady
as a new car and you're going down,
you know, there's cliffs that go a long way
down into Nowhereville, you know.
And then you've got all that to worry about.
Plus you don't want to tear up a million-dollar car.
You know, it's the fun factor
with a classic car tour is the fear factor.
Right.
So the FF factor.
Yeah, we'll have to remember that, right?
That's right.
So when you, I'm sure you get this call all the time.
Guy calls you and says,
I'm interested in XYZ car.
What's your process?
Do you tell him click?
I'm sorry.
Or we broke up.
I didn't hear you and don't ever call me again.
Or do you give people advice on buying cars?
And if you do, how do you make sure
that you're not putting yourself out there, you know?
I usually redirect them to forums
or to cars that have sold on bring a trailer
that have a lot of troll answering them
or to Facebook groups.
You know, I just had a problem with the right vent
on my daughter's Lotus Elise stopped working
and I posted on in the Facebook Lotus Elise S2 users group
and there were three or four answers
that came back that day.
This is how this is connected
and this is how this comes together.
I had a friend just say he's kind of interested
in a late model of the con.
And all I know about that
is that there have been several versions of McCons
and some have timing chain trouble,
troubles and so on.
You need to go immerse yourself
in the literature that's there
and even post the question.
Say, you know, I've got 22 grand to spend
and I want to buy a McCons
and what's my best choice?
Right.
Exactly.
Because they'll tell you
and you can, if you're,
if you know how to,
it's just like bring a trailer
or any of those other sites.
If you know what to believe
and what not to believe.
It's like reviews on a business.
You got to know which ones are just a guy
who's just angry
and you got to know which ones are legitimate.
Whether it's good advice, bad advice,
stay away, buy from this guy,
don't buy from this guy.
Yeah.
You have to use your own filtering system.
Yeah.
And just because it says it doesn't make it so,
you know.
When I watch on,
when I watch the bring a trailer auction,
if it's something I know a lot about,
like an alpha,
I will be very careful only
to say positive things.
Right.
Because there,
like there'll be people there
and they'll make a sum
they'll say the wrong, like they'll declare
that these are the right carburetors for this car.
Right.
They're not.
And they're not.
And it's not my business
to be the corrector there.
I'll just listen
and let other people kind of chime in.
But my job is to be supportive
and to say when these cars are set up
properly, they're really good.
Right.
I like the five speed conversion you've done here.
You know, I mean, it's just,
why not add positive?
Because there's always somebody else
with a knife they're going to twist.
Absolutely.
And it's funny
because a guy will call him say
they never made a Mustang
in 1968 in chartreuse.
And you prove them wrong
and they go, oh, I guess I was wrong.
But boy, they were just all hell bent
for leather when, you know,
when they first said it.
But you have to be careful too
because you're known.
People know that it's you.
The people know that you're
you're the one making the comment.
So you can't just be,
you have to be a little diplomatic
in this world.
Well, you want to be,
first of all,
they say do no harm, right?
Right.
I mean, the main thing is
you want to help a guy
get a good price for his car.
Sure.
And if somebody comes to me,
let's say they,
you know, they ask about
a Ferrari Mondial Cabriolet, right?
A car that was unloved,
it's become a little more loved.
Right.
Owned one.
And I can say to them,
you know, they have a dash
that was designed by
Kukla Fran and Ollie.
There's the first reference to that
on the Classic Auto Mall show folks.
The Kukla Fran and Ollie reference.
That's great.
They have a goofy Ferrari
from the 80s electronics problem.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
The car is not bad.
No.
If they're sorted and well taken care of
and well done and all that.
I mean, you know,
we see it all the time
and we've talked about it all the time.
The newbie at the auction raising his hand
for the $5,000 BMW fill in the blank.
And he's so excited that he's bought a BMW
after all these years
he's been marrying them.
And this car new was $80,000
and he just bought it for five grand
and he's so elated.
But that's going to be a short elation
unless that car was really well sorted
and has lots of documentation
and records and all that.
Your next bill is going to be more
than what you paid for the car.
Well, my story on that
I was with my daughter at a silver auction
and she was about 14
and there was a Land Rover disco
that was there.
And I've always,
I know that discos
are money evaporator machines.
Right.
And if you just walk by a disco
with a credit card
you get charged $4,000.
You're like, what the hell?
Just because.
But there was this car
that was there
that was a burgundy metallic
with tan leather
and it was sold by a friend of mine
who has got a reputation
for being the best detailer
in the world
and every flaw is hidden.
Right.
That's how good he is.
Don't worry about all those lights
on the dash.
They always come on.
It's just,
there's a little switch here
and you turn and do the thing.
That's right.
Actually, after I bought
the car he said, look,
here's a set of brake pads.
That'll help.
You know, that's,
yeah, that's funny
that the old brake pad.
Mark Trimble,
who started the Branson auction,
used to always,
every car he would sell up
on the block
he would get to where
that stalling point
where a car has climbed
and it's got to a certain point
and there's a leveling off
and their color guy
starts talking about it again.
Mark Trimble would always
take the microphone and go,
now folks,
I've just realized
that there's something wrong
with the fuel pump.
So I've got $200 here
for whoever is the buyer
of the car
to fix that fuel pump on me
because I didn't know about it
and I just have it.
He knew about it.
It's a little marketing thing
and so people are like
ding, ding, ding, ding
and he gave them the $200
and I love that.
You know, it was great marketing.
There's also nothing
like the sensation
with your daughter
looking at that and saying,
Daddy, could we own that car today?
Yeah.
Well, you want to,
yeah, we can.
Yes, honey.
The bidding has stopped
at $3,200.
Now, why is that?
Because everybody else
in the room is stupid
and everybody else in the room
knows that that car is worth
$2,800
on the best day of his life.
Wink, wink, nod, nod.
I mean, that's the problem.
Raise your hand
and you've bought your dream car.
For $3,200.
Plus fees.
Plus you got to get it home.
Plus, you know,
but you can drive it home
but probably not.
Probably not.
Probably not.
Probably not.
Well, if we haven't answered
all your questions,
there's always next week.
We'll have you on again
and hopefully we'll
have more
more enlightening,
insightful information
for all of our viewers
and listeners.
Keith Martin,
thank you so much.
Good to see you.
Take care.
Take care.
And we'll catch you next week
on The Classic Automall Show
here at The Classic Automall
Studio in Morgantown, Pennsylvania.
We'll see you then.
Music courtesy of the Pat Travers Band
for tour dates,
contact and stuff,
visit pattravers.com.
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About this episode
Stewart Howden hosts a lively discussion with guests Dennis Gage and Keith Martin, diving into their shared passion for classic cars and music. Gage shares his unique journey from musician to car enthusiast, reflecting on the muscle car era's influence on his life. The trio explores the challenges of owning classic vehicles, the importance of preserving automotive history, and the joy of connecting with fellow car lovers. They also touch on the significance of events like the Cars for Casey Show, which raises awareness for important causes. Expect humor, nostalgia, and insightful anecdotes throughout the episode.
Show #211 airdate 09-17-25 Stewart welcomes Dennis Gage as they discuss his career turns from Musician to Scientist to TV Personality. They discuss his My Classic Car show, getting to know luminaries like Carroll Shelby and Jay Leno, "finned Mopars", pedal steel guitar and his support of the annual "Cars for Kacie" charity show at the Mall, October 4, 2025) ALSO, Keith Martin of Sports Car Market discussing Classic Test Drives and figuring your fit PLUS final prep for CAM's NO RESERVE, ABSOLUTE auction on YouTube LIVE, 11am ET Sept. 19, 2025. https://kaciescause.org/cars-for-kacie https://x.com/988Lifeline https://SportsCarMarket.com/TestDrive6 www.youtube.com/@classicautomall/streams
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CONTENT NOTE: Contests, Prizes, Offers, Vehicles & other items may no longer be available or offered after each show's original broadcast or posting date.
Recorded in our Showcase Studio just inside the entrance of the Classic Auto Mall in Morgantown, PA, Host Stewart Howden, Classic Auto Mall President and Classic Car Specialist Steve Saffier talk about this unique and amazing place often with amazing guests.
YES...Classic Auto Mall is a REAL former shopping mall that covers almost EIGHT football fields with an average of nearly ONE THOUSAND classic vehicles under one, climate controlled roof and they're all FOR SALE!
Be sure to LIKE and SUBSCRIBE to be informed of new episodes and SEE them on the Classic Auto Mall YouTube Channel. We also invite you to VISIT US IN PERSON at Classic Auto Mall, one hour west of Philadelphia at PA Turnpike Exit #298, VISIT us online at ClassicAutoMall.com or talk to real, live people about visiting, buying or selling your classic on consignment at 888-227-0914.