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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. Hooray for old Detroit station wagons! You don't see many small Detroit wagons these days, since the Vista Cruisers and Country Squires sold in such greater numbers back in the pre-SUV era, so I was very happy to spot this bright yellow, Moon disc-equipped Chevy II (or maybe it's a Nova- hard to say with the emblems removed) parked downtown. You could get your little Chevy wagon with a 153-cubic-inch four-cylinder- whoa, a four -cylinder in a 60s Detroit wagon? Call the HUAC! You could also get a 194-cube six-cylinder; sorry, V8 fans, you had to wait until '64 for an optional 283 in your Chevy II. Even though this wagon's owner is clearly a salt-flat-crazed hot rod hoodlum, the single exhaust suggests that he or she has kept the four or six under the hood. Parts runnner? Daily driver? galleryPost('DOTS63NovaWagon', 17, '1963...
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By now, almost all of you have heard about the Barn Find Of The Year, the '63 Pontiac Tempest that turned out to be the long-lost Stan Antlocer Factory Experimental drag racer, one of six lightweight '63 coupes stuffed full of 421 goodness by Pontiac back in the day (you can read more about these machines at Hemmings ). The seller apparently had no idea what he had until crazy offers to end the auction early started pouring in, thus assuring those with hoarding disorders that you should always save everything… forever! Anyway, heartwarming story, piece of drag racing history, et freakin' cetera, but what we want to know is: how about that price? Did the bidders get carried away in a frenzy of one-upmanship, or is this completely trashed ex-race-car- which we freely admit registers an off-the-scale reading on the Jalopnik Cool-O-Meter™- really worth that much? galleryPost('NPOCPRaceTempest', 6, 'Long Lost Super Duty Tempest Goes For Godzillions Of Dollars On eBay'...
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newVideoPlayer("/63_Chevrolets_494.flv", 506, 423,""); Who in September 1963 would have predicted the crazy shit that was about to go down in this country, starting with Dallas in November, continuing through all the riots and wars and madness, and culminating in the 1910 Fruitgum Company becoming one of the most popular acts in the country? Not this wholesome stick-figure couple, who express themselves via 1890s-snake-oil-ad fonts as they enthuse over the idea of camping out at their local Chevy dealership in hopes of seeing the new Corvair.
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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. Today we're going to take a look at a car that was once everywhere , selling in numbers so vast that Ford and Chrysler execs could only shake their heads in envy. Yes, the early-60s full-sized Chevy… and where are they now? Well, the nice ones are mostly locked away in garages and get trailered to car shows, cruise nights, and lowrider events. The beaters mostly got wrapped around telephone poles or plowed into drainage ditches by generations of small-block-powered hoons, and the rest just sort of rusted to nothingness. Yet in Alameda, a down-but-not-out '63 Bel Air sedan still sees regular driving duty! How many of these things were made? The Standard Catalog figures have a lot of confusing overlaps between all the model variations, but my calculations seem to indicate that an incredible 2,602,830 full-sized 1963 Chevrolets were sold, including...
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This is Down On The Street Bonus Edition , where we check out interesting street-parked cars located in places other than the Island That Rust Forgot . Today we're going to show that old GM cars don't always dissolve into reddish stains on the pavement, even in a damp climate like the Pacific Northwest. Zeet has photographed this pair of very solid-looking examples of The General's products for us; note that all eight hubcaps are still present! galleryPost('DOTSBEOlyGMs', 3, '1963 Pontiac Bonneville And 1974 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Olympia Street'); DOTS FAQ
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newVideoPlayer("/63_Toyopet_Crown_JDM_476.flv", 506, 423,""); We've always loved Toyota's name for their Powerglide-based automatic transmission , but "Toyopet" just doesn't sound like the kind of name you'd use when you're planning to dominate the automotive world a few decades hence. The Crown got a lot more luxurious later on, but even in '63 it had a certain boxy presence... and look, no clutch pedal!
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Since we started off the week with a Falcon cartruck , we might as well take a look at an early Falcon with no truck bed. This '63 usually parks on the same block as the '69 VW Beetle , not far from where a Navy A7 crashed in the early 70s and became a grim Alameda legend. We've seen a couple of Falcons in this series, including a '62 and another '63 (if you consider the Mercury Comet to be a Falcon, then we've also seen this '64 and this '65 ). This one is a beater, no doubt about it, but it's driving every day and holding its head up high at age 45 (while other cars head to The Crusher at age 15 or 20). The slow-motion manner in which rust works around here means that there's not much urgency when the red stuff strikes; if you grind off some paint while doing bodywork, you can always wait until mañana to get some primer on there. Now we're in the dry season, with no rain likely until November or so. In 1963, your base Falcon came with a 144...
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Not long after undertw rescued a bunch of parts from a Volvo Amazon featured in this series, another old Volvo has been put out on the same yard. This is no run-of-the-mill Amazon, however- we're looking at a genuine Volvo 1800S (I'm going to say it's a '63, based on the grille) with plenty of good components ready for the picking. galleryPost('DOTJVolvo1800', 9, '1963 Volvo 1800S Down On The Junkyard');
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The majority of voters felt that an eternity spent wrenching on a pair of Willys Station Wagons would be preferable to eternity spent with a '58 Pontiac/'62 Mercedes-Benz combo, according to last Friday's Choose Your Eternity poll . That's fine, but what if you'd prefer endless toil on a hopeless challenging fast car? Something with light weight, V8 power, and primitive 60s suspension and brake design, perhaps? The red-hot iron gates are opening- come on in! The Pininfarina-designed fastback body on the MGB-GT looks great, most of us would agree, but that old BMC B engine left something to be desired in the power department. From personal experience, I can say that an MGB can barely get into triple-digit speeds with a stock B, and the six-cylinder and Rover V8 versions aren't enough better to justify the funky handling. That's why what you need is an MGB-GT whose funky handling is justified... by the presence of a good ol' small-block Chevy . In fact, you...
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After I was caught in a camera-challenged condition when spotting the '70 Fiat 500 near my office in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood and was forced to use the 640x480 so-called camera in my cellphone, I resolved to start carrying a real camera at all times. Naturally, I totally spaced on the camera thing when I caught sight of this 21-window Transporter while out for some Bánh mì on my lunch break last week, and once again we all get to look at blurry, wide-angle cellphone shots. These things didn't fare too well around here, because the sun and smog tend to eat up the seals around all those windows, which lets rust gain a toehold it generally never relinquishes. But here's a very original black-plate example that (if the window stickers are to be believed) has been damn near everywhere. galleryPost('DOTSBESFTransporter', 6, '21 Window Type 2 In San Francisco');
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Back when we had the Favorite Porsche Down On The Street Poll , the winner was the '67 Porsche 912 . While it's possible that the vote-splitting among the four Malaise Era 911s may have handed the win to the 912 by default, the fact remains that the oldest Porsche won. Is that because 1967 was long before the Porsche name got weighed down with all the Lifestyle Symbolism it bears today? Well, that '67 is a Porsche-come-lately next to today's DOTS find! Here's a street-driven '63 356 that still has the original paint and is no stranger to the autocross course to boot. I caught sight of this Porsche parked in front of the Peet's downtown and- for once- I hadn't forgotten to bring my camera when out on a non-DOTS mission. The owner was sitting outside with his coffee and was happy to tell the story of his car and let me shoot the engine and interior (it always helps in such situations when both of you went to the same high school, as was the case here). This...
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newVideoPlayer("63_Studebaker_Avanti_476.flv", 463, 387,""); Since we're in a Studebaker mood today, let's see how the doomed South Bend automaker tried to pitch their products during their last year building cars in the United States. You can get a flat floor and lots of rear seat room in the Lark, or the fastest production car in the world when you got the Avanti. What's it gonna be? Either way, we strongly recommend the disc brake option. And let's not forget the crazy Studebaker Wagonaire!
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