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Most of you approved of the super-beater '70 Skylark , with a small but vocal minority who felt physical pain at the very sight of the beat-to-hell Buick. I'm pretty sure that the approval rating of today's Skylark will be be fairly high across the board, given that it's a 40-year-old red convertible that lives on the street and all. This clean-looking Buick parks just across the street from the yellow '72 Beetle we saw last year. The Skylark Custom came with the luxury trim package, including fender skirts and plush padded vinyl interior. The standard engine was a 250-inch six, but just about all buyers opened their wallets for the 230-horse Buick 350 (and some went ahead and paid for the 300 horsepower 400). Mmmm, padded vinyl! This car listed at $3,098 new, which was 97 bucks more than the Fairlane GT convertible (and 700 bucks less than the '68 Lotus Europa). These photographs date from more than a year ago; it was actually one of the first cars I shot for this...
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We saw another Dart in our "Down On The Street" series just last week , but when have we seen a Dart wagon parked curbside in Alameda? I shot these photographs during a rainstorm over the winter; I'd planned on reshooting the car in brighter light, but I think the car looks more like a tough Detroit survivor- which it most certainly is- in the gloomy lighting and raindrop-blurring of these photos. More about this Mopar kiddie-hauler after the jump. It's had a restrained rat-rod-ization, which I think always looks pretty good on a station wagon. Of course, the '64 Dart also looks pretty good dressed in unadorned beaterhood . Painting stripes on the roof is a nice touch. I haven't heard this wagon run, so I can't vouch for the presence of the lumpy-cammed V8 the paint job deserves. The standard powerplant in '64 was the 170-cube Slant Six. This car is an official Radiator Hoes vehicle! The Hoes have a strong Alameda presence, so count on seeing some more...
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We've seen an Olds Delta 88 that uses a handicapped placard to park in San Francisco 's crowded South of Market neighborhood, and now reader TK has shot this F-85 a mile or so away in SF's even more parking-challenged Chinatown. This Olds is such a regular that it's visible in Google Street View! Make the jump to read TK's description. galleryPost('DOTSBEChinatownOlds', 9, 'Olds F85 Daily Driver Down On The SF Street'); I've seen this Oldsmobile Cutlass F85 in San Francisco Chinatown. Sitting around in front of corner of a tourist filled street in front of a shop called Chinatown Bizaar (Sacrmento/Grant). It's almost always in the same spot or within a block or two. Black CA plates, moo cow seat covers and the infamous blue handicap plaque. It can also be seen on google maps street view at the exact same spot. BTW I was one of the tourists. Didn't have a lot of time to take the pictures as my group was leaving. There were too many people on...
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The pre-Malaise Chevelle is a good example of a once-ubiquitous car that has largely disappeared from the streets, due to a one-two-three-punch combo of vulnerability to rust, suitability for hoonage, and high collector value (the same three items are also applicable to the first-gen Camaro). We saw a '71 Chevelle Malibu and a pair of '69s last year, but that's been it for the Chevelle contingent in this series so far. Until today, because I've had these shots of a '65 coupe in reserve for a while and now seems like the time to bring 'em out. This car doesn't seem to move much, judging by the dusty windows, but it looks to be complete and fairly solid. I found it parked on the same block as the BMW 3.0 CSi , though I'm pretty sure they're not owned by the same person. Most of these cars came with 194-cube sixes or 283 small-block V8s, though the options list included the 300-horse 327 (you had to wait for '66 to get a big-block Chevelle from the factory...
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We love our Chrysler A-bodies around here, no doubt about that. For that reason, I'm overjoyed to have finally found one of the later A-body-based Barracudas in Alameda. Cool as the 'fastback Valiant' early Barracudas were, the 1966-69 cars were the ones that really looked like their sleek carnivorous namesake (the E-body Chryslers- those that avoided being hooned to death back in the day, that is- are probably worth too much to the nostalgio-freak crowd to be seen parked on the streets of Alameda, but I'm still hoping to find one). A high-school friend of mine had a gold '67 like this one, equipped with lumpy-cammed 340 and 4-speed, and it probably took 15 years before his car's burnout marks finally disappeared from the stretch of Encinal Avenue in front of the school. My friend was also an ardent supporter of the Alameda High tradition of Open Header Fridays (eventually crushed by do-gooder teachers and motorcycle cops with strong ticket-writing hands, the tradition...
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