The long-awaited Monterey “speed week” is here. For many, the only purpose is the racing at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion. For others, the variety of shows and concours – from Tuesday’s Concours on the Avenue in Carmel, through Thursday’s Tour d’Elegance, and Friday’s Quail: A Motorsports Gathering, and the nationality and marque-centric Concorso Italiano, Legends of the Autobahn, and Porsche Werkes Reunion, culminating in Sunday’s 65th Annual Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance – are the only reason they come to the Monterey peninsula in August. Still others find this is the time to buy their dream, sell off their excess, or simply monitor the market.
We will be doing some of all of it. But as you may imagine from our interest in Porsche, we will be watching the tents and hotel ballrooms around the area. To that end, for our second story in this issue, we took a careful look at the more than 100 Porsches that are going to be offered in auctions and we spotted a range from the sublime to the, umm, not so sublime. We’ve pointed these out to you for your interest and amusement. We recommend you go to each auction’s website for complete information all of their offerings. It should be interesting, what with the vagaries of several international economies and the Fed’s hint of a rate increase in mid-September…
Regular contributor Richard Newton leads off the issue with a look at how three individual automobile collections began and what you might need to consider if you plan to begin one – or supplement it – at Monterey.
Then tell the story of a not-so-well known Porsche competition car, the 1984 Porsche 911 SC-RS. Don’t look for one at Monterey, though.
And finally, when you consider any purchase, remember the Latin expression Caveat Emptor means “let the buyer beware.” As the website www.consumer.findlaw.com explains, “Similar to the phrase ‘sold as is,” this term means that the buyer assumes the risk that a product will fail to meet expectations or have defects.”
Randy Leffingwell
Editor, Road Scholars Magazine
randy@road-scholars.com
