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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going to head over to the former Naval Air Station Alameda, where the Enterprise , Coral Sea , and Carl Vinson have been replaced by companies that make movies and absinthe. While the ex-base (now known as Alameda Point) is miles wide, it doesn't have many streets intended for parking and hardly anyone lives there full-time. That means the DOTS pickings aren't as good as the rest of the island, but I was still able to find this daily-driven '65 Comet parked near the old Officers' Club. We've already seen a 1965 Comet in Alameda (the Bechtle Mercury ), but that was a bottom-of-line 202. The Caliente, on the other hand, was the luxury version of the Comet, selling for $2,352 versus the $2,108 that penny-pinchers shelled out for the 202. Keep in mind, however, that the mechanically identical Ford Falcon coupe was just...
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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going to head over to the former Naval Air Station Alameda, where the Enterprise , Coral Sea , and Carl Vinson have been replaced by companies that make movies and absinthe. While the ex-base (now known as Alameda Point) is miles wide, it doesn't have many streets intended for parking and hardly anyone lives there full-time. That means the DOTS pickings aren't as good as the rest of the island, but I was still able to find this daily-driven '65 Comet parked near the old Officers' Club. We've already seen a 1965 Comet in Alameda (the Bechtle Mercury ), but that was a bottom-of-line 202. The Caliente, on the other hand, was the luxury version of the Comet, selling for $2,352 versus the $2,108 that penny-pinchers shelled out for the 202. Keep in mind, however, that the mechanically identical Ford Falcon coupe was just...
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Remember the 1967 Mercury Cougar we saw down on the Alameda street , just a little over a week ago? Well, I was shopping for some race-car pieces at an Oakland self-service junkyard yesterday when I spotted a primer-black Cougar that looked very familiar. Yes, just weeks after this 41-year-old car had been holding the Mercury flag high, that mean ol' tow truck hauled it away (I took the photographs in late July). I suspect the car was bought by the owner of the beater '68 Mustang as a parts car and then scrapped after being picked over like a leftover Thanksgiving turkey. Make the jump to see all the photos, before and after. galleryPost('DOTJDOTSCougar', 3, '1967 Mercury Cougar Pauses En Route From Street To Crusher'); galleryPost('DOTS67CougPrimer', 24, '1967 Mercury Cougar In Happier Times');
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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. The Cougar wasn't just a rebadged Mustang, Torino, Thunderbird, or Contour- it was a legend! We've seen a few Alameda Cougars, including this '68 (which won the Favorite DOTS Mercury poll ), this '73 , and this '75 , but we're overdue for another one. How about a mean-looking first-year example, complete with primer and missing lug nuts? Speaking of missing lug nuts, the question occurs to me: Why? Even if you're too damned cheap to spend the money- what, $1.99?- for a new lug nut, you can always fill your pockets for free at any junkyard. If that's too much hassle, at least try to fully attach your front wheels, so that you still might be able to steer after a wheel goes flying off. This car has 14 out of a possible 20 lug nuts, which ain't so good. Left-hand-thread Ford nuts are still easy to obtain, so I don't...
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Welcome to Project Car Hell , where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! In our last plunge into the Lake Of Fire, we saw the Alpine A310 stomp the Matra Murena like Napoleon pulverizing the Russians in the Battle of Austerlitz, with a decisive 70-30 split in the poll. Today we're going to go from PCH Édition Débâcle to something a little closer to home: Lowrider Project Hell! First, let's have the anthem! Before you go lining up your airbrush artist and gold-plating shop, you need to get a starting point. Since we're going old-school traditional here, the obvious choice would have to be the '64 Chevy Impala coupe. Now, you could find yourself a nice original '64, but have you priced them lately? You won't be able to afford that huge mural depicting La Noche Triste across the hood if you blow your entire roll on Day One, and it's simply unacceptable to get a four-door or even a Biscayne. We've got...
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You want to drive a car powered by the most reliable automobile engine ever produced , you want to burn non-petroleum fuel, yet you don't want to drive a boring ol' Mercedes sedan like every other anti-dinosaur-juice diesel demon in town? Loyal reader Vance has pulled our coat about this '67 Cougar with a freshly rebuilt turbo-equipped Mercedes-Benz OM617 installed; this setup looks like it was done right, though the price seems on the painful side and the performance is likely more tortoise than hare (albeit a tortoise that could win a 500,000-mile race with ease). [Craigslist Los Angeles] galleryPost('VeggieCougar', 6, 'Mercury Cougar Gets Mercedes Diesel Power');
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I enjoy the nice, shiny, well-preserved cars in this series, of course, but I really love me some beaters! Cars that haven't been coddled for one minute of their decades-long lives! This Cyclone is one of my all-time favorite Alameda cars; an original 289/4-speed machine, it's been roaring around the island for at least the last 15 years and probably longer. It sounds good, looks mean, and lives on a busy street. Sure, it's slowly rusting away, but it's got decades to go before the slow-motion California-style rust finally brings it down. I've talked to the owner of this car a few times (we were neighbors for a couple years in the late 1990s) and he's extremely proud of his wheels. As I recall, he's either the original owner or the second owner, and he has plans to get the body and paint done... someday. There's some rust-through on the hood, but you figure it took 44 years to get this bad... plenty of time to fix the body! The Cyclone name was later applied...
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How is it that I've only had one Mercury Cougar in this series so far, and that a Malaisemobile? Even worse, we forgot about all about the 40th anniversary of the Cougar last, in spite of repeated reminders from the Colorado Cougar Club ! Maybe the problem is that the bloat-o-riffic Farrah Fawcett Cougar managed to obscure our mental images of the sleek 60s cats. Anyway, I've photographed several of the sporty Mustang-based Cougars on the island and you'll be sure to see them in this series, starting with this '68. This Cougar lives in the East End, not far from the 1950 Pontiac Chieftan , and it seems to get driven regularly. The 210-horse 302 was the standard Cougar powerplant for '68, but you could get it with a 390 or even a 335-horse 428. Judging by the lack of badging on this car, we can assume it's probably a 302 machine. It's a little bit battered, but it looks to be in good original condition and still getting its owner around in old-school Mercury style...
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Hey, if you shoot enough photos of old cars on the streets of Alameda, sooner or later you'll get a shot that looks something like a Robert Bechtle painting! The photo above made me almost happy enough to forget my frustration that there's a super-original, 4-speed-equipped '68 AMX parked a couple doors down from this Comet... in a driveway , and thus off-limits to DOTS. The pain! And believe me, Alameda has plenty of DOTSworthy cars parked tantalizingly out of reach in driveways. Say, this Volvo Bertone, not to mention a 50s Land Rover, several Barracudas, a showroom-condition big-block '65 Impala, and... well, you get the idea. But never mind that- let's look at this fairly solid Comet, which is fair game for the roving DOTS camera! Charles Bukowski drove a Comet, though his was a few years older than this one. Still, that bestows some literary cachet upon the little Mercury. The '65 Comet 202 2-door listed at $2,108, which was $131 more than the mechanically identical...
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What's better than a regular station wagon? Why, a pink four-door hardtop station wagon with about 800 pounds of chrome, of course! I'm actually pretty familiar with this car, because I've known the owner for many years (and in fact was with him on the day a few years back when he bought it from the original owner). This Commuter was bought new at a dealership in Oakland and has lived its entire life in Alameda; I'm pretty sure it's only been off the island a handful of times in the last 48 years. This wagon is insanely ornate even by 1960 standards. Fins, emblems, wraparound glass, the works. And, of course, the four-door hardtopness is the icing on the cake. The word "original" might be a bit mild when describing this wagon; it's a freakin' time capsule . The original receipts from the dealer are still in the glovebox. Of course, it wouldn't win any shows in its current condition, for two reasons: A) Nobody knows what the hell a Mercury Commuter...
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