Editorial Team

David Mercer has spent the better part of twenty years following the collector car market closely — attending the major auction events in Scottsdale, Kissimmee, Monterey, and Indianapolis, tracking hammer prices, and building a detailed picture of how values move across different segments of the hobby. He approaches the market the way a financial analyst approaches any asset class: with data, historical context, and a healthy skepticism toward short-term hype.His focus is on what the numbers actually mean for private buyers and sellers, not just for the headline cars that dominate auction coverage. He writes about valuation trends, the gap between auction results and private-sale reality, and the segments of the classic car market that are quietly appreciating while everyone is watching something else. Based in Scottsdale, he is well-positioned to follow the January auction week that effectively sets the tone for the collector car market each year.

Mike Sullivan has been turning wrenches on American muscle cars since his teens, working his way through every stage of the restoration process — bodywork, paint, engine rebuilds, driveline authentication. Growing up in the Detroit area gave him early access to the culture that built these cars, and the obsession never faded.Over the decades he's worked on hundreds of Camaros, Mustangs, Chevelles, Chargers, and Cudas in every state of preservation. His particular focus is numbers-matching authenticity — understanding which components were factory-correct and which have been swapped or re-stamped is, in his view, the foundation of any honest evaluation. He writes about muscle cars the way he works on them: direct, practical, and with no patience for inflated claims.He owns a 1969 Camaro Z/28 he's had since his mid-twenties and a 1970 Chevelle SS396 that he has no intention of selling.

Patrick Walsh has been writing about classic cars and the culture around them for the better part of fifteen years, working as a freelance contributor to various automotive publications and spending a significant part of each year attending shows, rallyes, and auctions across the country. His focus is the human side of the hobby — the restorers, collectors, and enthusiasts who put in the work, and the community that gathers around these cars at events ranging from small local shows to major national concours.He brings a journalist's eye to the subject: interested in the stories behind the cars as much as the cars themselves, attentive to the broader culture and what it says about the people involved. He's competed in several vintage rallyes and has talked to enthusiasts at every level of the hobby, from first-time buyers figuring out where to start to long-time collectors managing multi-decade collections. Based in Nashville, he covers the Southeastern show circuit extensively each spring and fall.

Sarah Whitfield grew up in a family that took pre-war motoring seriously. Her grandfather drove vintage cars across Europe, and she learned to appreciate the craftsmanship of coachbuilt automobiles from an early age through her father's collection of 1930s American classics. After a career in the arts, she turned her attention fully to the world of pre-war collector cars.She has spent years researching period coachbuilders, marque histories, and factory records from the 1920s and 1930s — work that has given her a detailed understanding of what originality actually means in vehicles that have passed through multiple owners and restorations over nine decades. She attends the major concours events each year and writes about pre-war cars with a level of historical rigor that the subject deserves.Her personal collection includes a 1933 Pierce-Arrow Twelve and a 1936 Cord 810 Phaeton, both unrestored survivors.

Tom Ramirez relocated to Bowling Green, Kentucky specifically to be closer to the center of Corvette history — the assembly plant, the museum, and the community of collectors and researchers who have spent their lives documenting the marque. What started as a personal obsession became a long-running research project covering every generation of Corvette production from 1953 onward.His focus is factory documentation: build sheets, tank stickers, dealer records, and the production decisions that defined each generation. He's spent years cross-referencing surviving cars against production data and tracing the development history through original sources. He writes about Corvettes the way a historian writes about any subject — methodically, with primary sources whenever possible, and with a healthy skepticism toward the myths that accumulate around desirable cars.Tom owns a 1967 427/435 Sting Ray, a 1972 LT-1 coupe, and a daily-driver C5 Z06.

Emily Chen spent over a decade in technical roles in the Bay Area before her passion for vintage import cars took over an increasingly large part of her life. She brings an engineer's discipline to everything she does with classic cars — documenting restorations methodically, researching period specifications, and understanding the mechanical logic behind decades-old engineering decisions.Her main interests are first-generation Datsun Z cars, early air-cooled Porsche 911s, the BMW E30, and the Toyota 2000GT. She's spent years embedded in the communities around these cars — learning from marque specialists, sourcing rare components, and developing the kind of hands-on knowledge that only comes from time with the cars themselves. Her writing reflects that same analytical approach: focused on what the data and the hardware actually tell you, rather than received wisdom.Her current garage holds a 1972 Datsun 240Z in active restoration and a 1989 BMW M3 that she drives daily.

Robert Halloran has spent the better part of four decades immersed in the world of classic American pickups. Growing up in central Texas, trucks weren't collectibles — they were working tools, and he developed an early appreciation for the ones built to last. Over the years he's bought, sold, restored, and driven more classic Chevrolets, Fords, GMCs, and Dodges than he can accurately count.His expertise runs deepest on 1947-1987 Chevrolet and GMC trucks, the 1956-1966 Ford F-100 series, and the square-body generation through 1987. He knows where rust hides on each platform, which components are becoming genuinely scarce, and which trucks represent real value at different budget levels. He writes with the practical perspective of someone who actually uses these trucks rather than just displaying them.Robert keeps a collection of classic pickups on his property south of Fredericksburg — a mix of finished drivers and ongoing projects — and has been writing about the classic truck hobby for the better part of twenty years.

Jim Vasquez grew up around hot rods in the Los Angeles area, spending his formative years learning the trade from older builders — chopping tops, channeling frames, laying paint, sourcing period hardware. He eventually settled in Long Beach, where he has spent the last two decades building traditional customs and hot rods and staying close to the West Coast show circuit.His work sits firmly in the traditional kustom kulture camp: chopped 1949-1951 Mercurys, channeled 1932 Ford coupes, and flathead-powered street rods built from late-1920s and early-1930s American iron. He writes about these cars from a builder's perspective — what makes a correct period build, where the compromises are, and how to tell a well-executed traditional custom from one that just looks the part.Jim's daily driver is a chopped, channeled 1933 Ford three-window coupe with a built Mercury flathead — exactly the kind of car he's been building and driving his whole adult life.

Ray Delgado runs a small fabrication shop outside Phoenix, where he builds chassis, chops tops and shapes body panels the old way, on an English wheel and in a jig. He came up sweeping floors in a chassis shop and stayed for the craft. Ray writes about the parts of a build most people never see: how a frame is boxed and Z'd, why a channel job changes everything, and where a chop goes wrong. He is patient on process and blunt about shortcuts that come back to bite you.

Hector Morales grew up on the boulevards of East Los Angeles, where lowriding is family before it is a hobby. He has built and rebuilt more cars than he can count, laid candy and flake, wired hydraulic setups, and repped his club at shows across the Southwest. Hector writes about lowrider culture with the respect and first-hand knowledge it deserves, from the history of the movement to how a setup is plumbed. He is proud, generous with credit, and quick to correct outsiders who get the culture wrong.

Gary Nowak has been around traditional hot rods since he was a kid hanging around his uncle's garage in Milwaukee. He has owned a string of Model A and '32 Ford rods, driven them hard through Wisconsin winters, and watched the hobby change over five decades. Gary writes hot rod history and traditional-build wisdom the way he tells it at the coffee shop: nostalgic, opinionated, and full of the small details that only come from being there. He respects the old guys and the old way of doing things.

Dan Reeves builds engines for a living in Mooresville, North Carolina, in the shadow of the stock-car shops. He cut his teeth on the dyno and has never lost the habit of trusting the sheet over the story. Dan writes about engine swaps, blowers and turbos, and driveline the way he works: with numbers, tolerances and results. He is blunt about what makes power and what just makes noise, and he has no patience for parts-catalog fantasy.

Wayne Coburn has owned Corvettes since his first C2 in the 1980s and has judged, shown and talked Corvettes ever since, close to the factory and museum in Bowling Green. Where some historians live in the records, Wayne lives in the community: the club meets, the barn stories, the guy who knew the guy. He writes Corvette history and buying know-how with a raconteur's warmth, grounded in documentation but told through people. He will happily settle a bench-racing argument with a tank sticker.

Nora Beckett came to classic cars sideways, through the people who love them. Based in Austin, she spends her weekends at shows, swap meets and on the road, camera in hand, collecting the stories that specs never capture: the widow selling her husband's truck, the kid buying his first project, the club that became a family. Her features lead with a person and a moment, then let the car earn its place. She writes warm, human and a little literary.

Marcus Feld is a collector-car appraiser based in Chicago, where he values cars for insurance, estates and buyers who want the truth before they wire the money. He works auctions from the back of the room with a notebook, tracking not just what sold but what did not and why. Marcus writes about value with an appraiser's discipline: condition tiers, documentation, liquidity and downside risk. He is drier than a salesman and a lot more useful when the check is real.