Page 6 - Wayne Carini's Guide to Affordable Classics

FOREWORD
“You can sleep in your car, but you can’t drive around in a house.”
In 1985, when I was first licensed to drive, Road & Track published a paperback book called Used Car Classics. After reading about it in the pages of the magazine, I drove to the local mall and purchased a copy at Waldenbooks. Thumbing through those pages helped broaden my appreciation and enthusiasm for classic cars. Until that point my automotive affections had been exclusively reserved for Triumphs, which made perfect sense since the only vehicle I had ever driven was a 1966 TR4A. Over the ensuing years, I
ABOVE: This 1956 Austin-Healey 100 was purchased sight unseen from a sealed bid auction in Montana. It was in almost the same condition as seen here and was one of the best buys I have ever made. TOP RIGHT: My father purchased this Triumph TR4A in 1966. I learned to drive in it and it kindled my passion for British sports cars.
4Wayne CariniAffordable Classics
returned to Used Car Classics with surprising regularity, spurring dreams about owning an old Ferrari 250 GTE or 330 GT 2 + 2 for the same price as a new Honda Accord (which was still out of reach at the time but seemed somewhat possible in the near future) or owning something cool with a roof like a Datsun 240Z for the rare times when rain fell on Southern California.
Whenever I had some spare money in the bank, I would find the copy of Used Car Classics on the shelf and give it a once over, mulling over the possibilities that could be found in the current edition of Auto Trader or The Pennysaver (for the millennials out there you might get a kick out of finding out how cars were bought and sold in the days before eBay, Bring a Trailer or Craigslist). Eventually, thinking turned into buying. Purchased for $200, that basket-case TR7 is the closest I have ever come to committing insurance fraud. In the end, I paid someone to haul it away, leaving me much better educated in the hazards of car collecting but having invested $500 for the lesson.
Over the years, other British sports cars joined the stable. There was an MGA and a Morgan Plus Four, several more Triumphs, and almost a dozen Austin-Healeys, but also an Alfa Romeo Spider, Mazda RX-7, Mercedes-Benz 250SE and a SWB Porsche 911 that I should never have sold. There are as many reasons to collect cars as there are cars to collect, but for me it all starts with the backstory. For example, I think one of the main reasons for owning a Morgan is an appreciation for what it represents, a veritable automotive time warp. Built with hand tools in the same workshops that have been used for over a hundred years, even relatively modern Morgans look identical to the examples built before World War II. The same holds true for an Alfa Romeo Duetto, Ferrari 308 or Porsche 914. While not the most desirable representatives from these iconic marques, they share similar DNA and all the heritage as their more famous predecessors with valuable names like the 8C 2900B, 250 GTO or 917.