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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've got a car that I knew I'd find in Alameda someday: a Chrysler E Body! Now, these things have become totemic worship objects for Baby Boomers who remember when they had hair, virility, optimism, etc., so just about all of them now spend their days locked in garages in between cruise nights and car shows, much like the equally seldom-seen first-gen GM F Bodies. I've seen this Sub Lime '70 around for years, but never parked on the street… until now! I found this car on the same block as a few other DOTS honorees, including the '57 Cadillac , the VW Transporter Syncro , and a couple you haven't seen yet. Hemi blah blah blah, that's all you hear about when folks talk about the '70 Challenger's engine choices. Fact is, the majority of these cars came from the factory with 318s (60%, according to the Standard...
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newVideoPlayer("/70_DodgeDartSwinger_494.flv", 506, 423,""); Since my cultural knowledge has giant gaps when it comes to old TV shows, I have no idea whether the character of the super-stereotyped Southern Sheriff in this ad was lifted from a TV show or created from scratch for this ad. Either way, it appears that he's getting ready to put the Dodge dealer on the chain gang for the crime of giving the Sheriff's wife an automatic transmission in her '70 Dart Swinger at no extra cost. How about a 4-speed manual at no extra cost?
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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 "fuselage" early-70s Chrysler is pretty well represented in this series, with this '71 Newport and this '71 Newport Royal , but seeing yesterday's '70 Newport Royal ad made me decide to break out the photos of today's vast two-door luxury machine. The 1970-71 Chrysler C-body is actually one of my favorite Detroit body styles of all time (with the 1970 Chrysler 300 Hurst being the ultimate ), and I've often considered leaving a "How much do you want?" note on today's DOTS car. How many acres is that hood? The standard engine for the '70 Newport was a 383 with 290 horsepower, but the Chrysler dealer could get you a 350-horse 440. Get the 300 Hurst and you got 370 horsepower from your 440. Sadly, a 4-speed manual transmission was not available from the factory. There's the usual rust you see...
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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. We tend to think of the Ford Maverick as a pure Malaise Era vehicle, and the two '74s we've seen in this series ( this one and this one) reinforce that impression. Don't forget, though, that the Maverick first hit the showroom floor in pre-Malaise 1969; I've managed to find an early example on the island for today. The Maverick was built on the aging Falcon chassis, with the Falcon nameplate getting moved over to the mid-sized Fairlane line for 1970, where it was used on the cheapo stripper models. The Maverick had the same suspension design- leaf springs and all- that made the early Mustangs handle so badly from the factory. Still, the Maverick was cheap ($1,995 in 1970), simple, and worked just fine as basic transportation. Look at it this way: for just $150 more than the '70 Beetle, you could get a traditional rear-drive/water...
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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. It's Truck Monday once again, and today I've decided to do something about the shortage of Nixon Era Fords in this series. A couple of sharp-eyed readers noticed this truck in the background of the photos of the Dart GT convertible , so I headed back to photograph it. It says something about Alameda that a solid 38-year-old Ford pickup doesn't even seem all that special at first glance; you see them all over the place here. For the base '70 F250 Custom pickup, you paid $2,780 and got a 150-horse six-cylinder engine. The Camper Special package added big mirrors, heavy-duty alternator and cooling system, and some extra gauges. You could get the 300 six or your choice of V8s in 302-, or 360-, or 390-cubic-inch displacements if you started eyeballing the options list. This truck appears to have the Boxwood Green two-tone paint job; the...
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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's car is our fourth Chevy Impala; we've seen a '65 sedan , a '65 Super Sport , and a beautifully wretched '70 prior to today. I'm always reminded of the car driven by Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) in Repo Man when I see a full-size Chevy from this era. The original Alex Cox screenplay (yes, I live by the Repo Code to the extent that I have a copy) was very specific about the make, model, and year of every single vehicle in the movie, and Bud's car was supposed to be a '70. Even with the bent front bumper, this car is way nicer than my 1:25 scale Beater '70 Impala model , but it's got the right number of doors. Actually, it's possible that this car is really a Caprice, since there are no identifying emblems (the Bel Air and Biscayne models didn't come in two-door versions for '70). The interior looks...
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Yesterday, we saw the Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72 Hell Project competition go to the '72 Volvo 1800ES by a Nixon-over-McGovern-style landslide, with 73% of the vote favoring the Volvo over the '72 Cougar. Today we're going to punish reward Graverobber for his run of incredible PCH tirades (such as this one , this one , or- my personal favorite- this one ) by making him work harder for a PCH Tipster T-shirt than anyone else ever has. The deal I made with him: he chooses the cars, he writes the tirade for the cars, I include the tirade in the post... and everyone wins! Well, except for those who grumble about seeing Mercury Cougars in two consecutive Choose Your Eternity challenges, that is, but we'll pay that price. Perhaps the second-gen Mercury Cougar took such a beating from the Volvo in yesterday's matchup because most folks much prefer the styling of the first-gen 1967-70 models. If so, today's cat might have a better chance, because it's...
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Great big Detroit luxury machines, with two huge doors that swing out about 10 feet to the side when opened and a crude pushrod V8 with way more than 400 cubes under the hood. Aside from the low-single-digit gas mileage, what's not to love? The Lincolns of the 60s and 70s never quite sold like their Cadillac competition, but they had hoods like aircraft carrier decks and grilles carved from gigantic slabs of pure chrome. They were outrageous and beautiful, in a way the staid Caddy could never really pull off, and I wish I could find more of them parked on Alameda's streets. Sadly, this is just the fourth vintage Lincoln I've found for this series. That's enough cars for us to have a poll, though! I found this car parked on the same block as the '67 Vista Cruiser and just around the corner from the Volvo P1800 . This might actually be a '71; the external appearance of the '70 and '71 Mark IIIs is pretty much identical. Both came with the 365-horse 460 engine...
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It seems impossible, but we're on the 286th street-parked Alameda vehicle in this series and only now are we seeing a Chevrolet Monte Carlo. How could that be? The first generation of Though the Monte Carlo was based on the Chevelle, the fenders got these distinctive bulges. The factory rally wheels and center caps look good on this car, and I think the lowered front suspension works as well. The Monte Carlo was about 150 pounds heavier and 300 bucks costlier than a 307-powered Chevelle coupe, but you got a 250-horse 350 engine as standard equipment. Give the Chevy salesman an extra $420.25 and you could get the SS package, which included a 454 churning out 360 horsepower (though for some reason you couldn't get a four-speed manual with the 454-powered Monte). The question here is: do the later G-body Monte Carlos belong in this series? Say, the '82s and '83s? galleryPost('DOTS70Monte', 13, '1970 Chevy Monte Carlo Down On The Street'); DOTS 1-200 • DOTS 201...
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newVideoPlayer("/70_Monterey_476.flv", 506, 423,""); W. C. Fields died in 1946, but his mock-crafty drunk persona still had sufficient cultural resonance 24 years later for Mercury to use an impersonator to sell the huge '70 Monterey 2-door hardtop. We think this ad would have been better had the Fields character taken a big swill from a hip flask prior to getting behind the wheel, but that might have been going too far, even in 1970. We've seen an example of the big Merc down on the Alameda street.
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You don't see any Honda 600s on the street these days, although they didn't sell too badly back in the early 70s . You see them at car shows , and that's about it. That leads me to wonder where this example I spotted at an East Bay self-service wrecking yard has been hiding all these years. It looks like the interior is packed with engine parts from several other Honda 600s (or maybe Honda motorcycles), so maybe this was a "last resort" parts car that was finally used up by a 600 freak and discarded like an empty sake bottle. Not many parts left, but a few bits and pieces might be worth salvaging. galleryPost('DOTJHonda600', 12, 'Honda 600 Down On The Junkyard');
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The little Datsuns of the early 70s are just about gone now, though a few still roam the streets of the Island That Time Forgot. We saw a '75 B210 last fall, and now we've got an even rarer machine in this early-70s 1200. I'm calling it a '71, but it might be a '72 or maybe even a '70; we'll need to rely on the serious Datsun fiends out there to nail down the exact year. This car may spend most of its time garaged, but I see it on the street in my neighborhood from time to time. It appears to be an original, unrestored time capsule of an early Datsun. I'm hoping I'll be able to find the owner one of these days and ask him about this little jewel's story. Known as the Sunny back in its homeland, the 1200 was cheap, got great mileage, and was way more reliable than its European and Detroit competition. And it has an interesting Japanese racing history as well! Who knows, maybe this is the original Yankees bullpen car (though apparently the Dodgers had...
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newVideoPlayer("70_Hillman_Hunter_Hustler_476.flv", 463, 387,""); The Hillman Hunter was the Chrysler Europe machine that eventually became the Iran Khodro Paykan (and was related to many other British cars of its time). In 1970, Australians could buy themselves a rally-ized version called the Hustler, equipped with a twin-carb 1725cc engine, four-speed box, and one of the most bongo-riffic Sideburn Era ads we've ever seen. Here comes Hustler!
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Since helping our Czech friend BobAsh get a Malaise Corvette from California to his homeland was so easy, I agreed to keep an eye open for a nice Crown Victoria Police Interceptor for him. After all, roaring through the streets of Prague in a genuine California cop car would be almost as much fun as roaring through the streets of San Francisco in a genuine Tatra 603. Last weekend I stopped by the auction yard at which I bought my Crown Vic a few years back, and found that the inventory included quite a few early 70s Ford Thunderbirds. In fact, the inventory was almost entirely 1970 and 1971 T-Birds. Make the jump for more photos and the rest of the story. galleryPost('ThunderbirdAuctionTop', 6, 'Time For Deals On Early 70s Thunderbirds'); It turns out that I was looking at the estate of a recently deceased collector of '70 and '71 Thunderbirds, with at least 35 examples going under the auctioneer's gavel. Some two-doors, some suicide-doors, all with 429 engines...
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Now that we've got two photographers out shooting Denver DOTSBE cars while out walking their respective dogs, we can expect to see plenty of vintage machinery from the streets of the Mile High City. Today we're going to look at a solid-looking 1970 or 1971 Datsun 240Z (Z experts, please help out on the exact year here) shot by Ejacobs , who brought us the late-40s International Harvester KB-3 last week. galleryPost('DOTSBEDenver240Z', 9, '1970 Datsun 240Z Down On The Denver Street');
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