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Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Alameda is definitely a VW Transporter sort of town; you can find all the major Transporter-loving groups here, from original-owner curmudgeons to Spicoli -grade surfers. Yes, even though Alameda is inside San Francisco Bay and thus gets waves better measured in inches than in feet on its beaches, we still have plenty of surfers here. Windsurfers and kite surfers, that is, crazies who think nothing of braving the 50° water, howling winds, and vicious currents on their boards. And when they're done flirting with death for the day, they need a proper vehicle to store their bongs haul their gear back home. We've seen many roof-rack-equipped Transporters in this series, including this '56 , this '57 , this '60 , and this '66 . Since this chalkboard-patina example is parked at the beach, I suspect its roof rack is often used to...
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In the late 1950s, legendary San Jose-based customizer Joe Wilhelm started work on a project based on a 1936 Ford coupe. It started out fairly simple, with handmade grille and fenders on a still-recognizable Ford body, but became far more radical within a few years. By 1965, the car- called the Mark I Mist- sat on a Jaguar XK140 frame, with quad-carbed Buick nailhead and a wild European-influenced body. It was a big hit at the car shows and made the covers of Car Craft , Rod & Custom , etc. Then the car disappeared, not to be seen again for decades... when Black Metal V8olvo crew chief Hellhammer (aka Junkyard Dave) tracked it down. galleryPost('MarkMistTop', 6, 'The Mark I Mist 1936 Ford'); The Buick engine was gone, but otherwise the Mark Mist was in pretty good shape. The gauges still have their 24-karat gold plating, and the upholstery has held up very well. In fact, all the car really needs is a new engine and a general mechanical going-over to be ready to roll...
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You guys who tear your hair out when you see a nice, easily restorable old car heading to The Crusher in this series... think you can work up any tears for this beyond-basket-case '59 T-Bird? I spotted it at the same East Bay wrecking yard that gave us the '69 Renault 16, and it looks like you might be hard-pressed to find many usable parts on it. Still, the engine is still there, and the front bumper looks like it might be salvageable. galleryPost('DOTJ59Tbird', 3, '1959 Thunderbird Down On The Junkyard');
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We all miss the inimitable POLAЯ , but at least we've got some DOTSBE photos that he shot on the streets of his native Toronto before running off to become Maximum Warlord of the Trilateral Commission. First up is this remarkably unrusty '59 DeSoto; make the jump to see the entire gallery and read some classic POLAЯisms galleryPost('DOTSBETorontoFireflite', 9, '1959 DeSoto Down On The Toronto Street'); This is one of two beauties that are within a block of each other, parked on a main artery in downtown Toronto! First up, I found what I believe to be a 1959 Desoto Fireflite four door. While taking the pictures at 10:30 a.m., a guy three sheets to the wind stumbles out of the house it's parked in front of, and although he's not the owner, he tells me that he knows the owner and says the car has not been not restored! She's beauty marked with some rust here and there, but aside from that she looks pretty solid for an almost 50 year old automobile. Drunk...
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You may think you've experienced a planned community in which every last detail was carefully designed by lab-coated scientists in 1956 to elicit Maximum Upscale Suburban Ennui in its residents, but only Irvine, California, gets it down perfectly . Well, almost perfectly, because Al Frente has spotted these street-parked relics shattering Irvine's soothing vehicular harmony of BMWs and Tahoes. We've got an original-looking '59 Edsel Ranger, a mid-60s forward-control Chevy G-series van, and a '68 or '69 GMC pickup in L.A. School District colors. Make the jump to see all the photos and read what Al Frente has to say about these vehicles. galleryPost('DOTSBEIrvineEdsel', 12, 'Old Detroit Iron Down On The Irvine Street'); This car parks in Irvine, CA. I don't think it's a daily driver, but it does move a bit. The pink paint is very faded, but Also, here's a cute little Chevy van and the GMC Suburban-type that I mentioned. The GMC is my favorite...
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It would appear that our readers are Lamborghini purists, given the 82/18 shellacking the V12-powered Espada issued to the Chevy-powered Espada in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll. Either way, who would have imagined owning a genuine, almost-running Lamborghini for the price of a new base Camry? Project Car Hell beckons! As we say so often here: what could go wrong? Today we're going to leave PCH Superpower Italy and head to a nation not so well known for maddeningly difficult Hell Projects; yes, we're feeling so inspired by the vintage Japanese steel at the Motoring J Style show that we have no choice but to descend into the fiery furnace of Vintage Japanese Car Hell. The Japanese have been building super-reliable, easy-to-repair vehicles with good parts availability for so long now that we tend to forget that at one time they built crazy cars. Cars that rusted to nothingness before your eyes, full of components and designs from Britain and Italy... while at the same time...
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The extremely cheap, extremely sketchy (putatively) NSX-engine-powered Acura Legend obliterated the dime-a-dozen turbo Civic in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll , which is about what we expected. So what if we could find not just an NSX engine but an entire car for cheap (well, maybe entire isn't the right word here, but you get the idea)- what then? Well, then we have quite a dilemma when trying to find something to stack up against the Acura, a car that's equally cool, in spittin' distance of the NSX's price range, and hideously expensive when it comes to part obtainment. Perhaps it's an impossible task, but let's see how things sort out in today's Detroit-versus-Japan matchup! You want an NSX, and so do I. It's safe to say that you wouldn't be reading this series in the first place if you were the sort who doesn't want an NSX (unless your brand of garage masochism requires engines with carburetors... lots and lots of carburetors, in which...
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