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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 . I just got back from Denver, where I photographed a few cool old cars parked on the street, including a very nice early Mini… but you don't get to see that today. Instead, you get something even better! Denver-based Kitt and EJacobs continue to send in good stuff found in their neighborhoods (south and northwest Denver, respectively), and today we'll be admiring a trio of vintage Detroit wagons that continue to remind us that SUVs didn't always reign supreme in the family-hauling department. Make the jump for many, many photos. galleryPost('DOTSBEDenverWagonsTop', 6, 'Vintage Detroit Wagons Down On The Denver Street Part 1'); The Olds and Plymouth wagons were shot by Kitt . galleryPost('DOTSBEDenverWagonsOlds', 29, '1966 Oldsmobile Wagon Down On The Denver Street'); galleryPost('DOTSBEDenverWagonsPly'...
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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. BMW 2002s are plentiful on the island (we've seen a beater '72 , a '73 2002Tii , and a massive-bumpered slushbox '75 so far), though technically this one isn't on the island. I've ventured over to Bay Farm Island (which was once literally an island but is now attached to the mainland at the Oakland Airport, just as the island part of Alameda was once a peninsula), which is part of Alameda but lacks sufficient garage-less housing to make for happy DOTS hunting. However, it's still possible to find interesting machinery where Jack London once went oyster pirating, and I've found this clean round-taillight 2002 there. 1972 was the last year before the Malaise Era , so the power was still there (though the new horsepower rating system pushed the numbers down) and the gigantic bumpers hadn't arrived yet at the time this...
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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. One thing I've tried to do is keep Volkswagen Old Beetles from overwhelming the series; that's because there we've got more air-cooled Beetles than any other type of old car on the island- more, even, than Chrysler A bodies. This doesn't mean, however, that I should avoid them completely- I just need to space them carefully… and our last one was all the way back in June. So here we go- our first DOTS Super Beetle! I'd had a couple of old-style Beetles prior to getting my first Super Beetles, and the switch from the old torsion-beam front suspension to McPherson strut suspension (this being the primary difference between the Super Beetle and the regular kind) didn't feel all that meaningful while driving. However, the new front suspension made room for lots more storage space under the hood. I'm not 100% sure of the year...
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newVideoPlayer("/72_Cocoa_Puffs_476.flv", 506, 423,""); Gramps pushing Sonny The Cuckoo Bird 's horseless carriage across the wasteland, where their carcasses will soon become food for birds that eat rotting corpse flesh rather than artificially flavored and colored breakfast cereal… but wait! Gramps whips out some Cocoa Puffs and pure liquid methamphetamine milk, and the resulting frenzy bounces the Model T all the way to the nearest gas station. This ad was much more successful than the one in which Sonny slaughters an entire NVA division in Quang Tri.
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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! Last time we simultaneously crushed and seared our fingers in the red-hot vise of the Hell Garage, the Shelby-ized Dodge Omni beat hell out of the Shelby-ized Dodge Shadow in the poll. Today, with the New England 24 Hours of LeMons race coming up in just a few days, we're thinking about the kind of car it takes to win the most prestigious trophy of the event. No, that's not the one that goes to the so-called "overall winner" (although a team does get some heavy-duty bragging rights by taking that honor ). We're talking about the coveted Index Of Effluency trophy, the one given to the team that achieves beyond all reasonable expectation in a seemingly hopeless "race car." You contend for the IOE by showing up in a looks-fast-on-paper car that everyone knows is going to blow up for sure (e.g., Maserati Biturbo, Merkur XR4Ti,...
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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 has a fair number of International Harvester vehicles (we had a Favorite DOTS IHC poll with the last one , and the 1948 KB-2 pickup won), most of which seem to get regular driving time. Today we're going to check out a no-frills truck that's eager for the collapse of civilization, at which point it will become more valuable than all the Rolls-Royces and Lamborghinis in the state put together. Most of the time, when I see a jacked-up 4x4 with big mud-slingin' tires in a context as distinctly urban as this, it strikes me as a silly vehicle. Not so with an International Harvester! This Scout might not be a '72, but the grille is a '72. No doubt some parts have been swapped here or there, so there's no telling at a glance. If it is a '72, the available engines were a (non-AMC) 304 V8 and a 196-cube four-cylinder. Base...
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Welcome to Down On The Street, where we look at old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Another Truck Monday has rolled around, which means we can contemplate work vehicles as we descend into the salt mine for the day's tasks, and this week's DOTS truck is another example of farm equipment maker International Harvester's road machinery. It's been a couple months since our last Scout in this series, and this is the oldest one I've managed to find on the island so far. In '72, you could get your Scout II with a 196-cube four-cylinder engine (that's 3.2 liters, for you fans of the metric system and/or really big four-bangers) or a 304-cubic-inch V8. No, that's not an AMC engine- genuine farm equipment here! Breakers breakers, any takers? It's been a while since CB radios were relevant; whatever vestige of CB that the cellphone didn't kill, cheap and powerful FMS/GMRS radios finished off. Still, a...
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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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In possibly the most humiliating defeat for France since the whole Algerian débâcle, a French car lost a Project Car Hell challenge to American machinery, with the '61 Simca Aronde getting crushed beneath the rusted hulks of a pair of Lincoln Continentals... and that's with the Simca getting some help from one of the finest PCH commenter tirades we've ever seen (notice hereby given: Graverobber has raised the Commenter Tirade Bar to hitherto unprecedented levels). We'll need to give France a chance to regain its former PCH glory very soon, but we're going to get all political-journalist on your ass with today's choices. I'm not one of those guys (and they're all guys) who blindly worship every mark that the dope-palsied hand of Hunter S. Thompson ever set on paper, but when the man was on, he was really on (insert rant here about annoying HST wannabes who focus on the lifestyle instead of the writing). Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72 stands...
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Most of us Norteamericaños imagine a cheap, zippy 124 or 128 when we think of early-70s Fiats, so the luxurious Fiat 130 coupe appears to come from an alternate universe (in which, perhaps, the Vega and Pinto managed to compete with their Japanese rivals). It packs a snarling 160-horse DOHC V6 under the hood, as befits a car that manages to get away with a red velour interior without looking ridiculous. We'd been meaning to go photograph DSwig's 130 (and maybe talk our way into a drive), but we're too late and now it's up for sale. [eBay Motors] galleryPost('Fiat130eBay', 3, '1972 Fiat 130 Coupe For Sale On eBay');
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newVideoPlayer("/72_NissanSkyline_JDM_476.flv", 506, 423,""); This is apparently one of the famous "Ken and Mary" Skyline ads, which were so popular in Japan that the car was actually known as the Kenmari. And hey, you can see why! Check out Mary's kinda-now-kinda-wow headband, which shows that she's tuned in . And Ken's hair... well, we can see where James May got the inspiration for his own look. We lust for that beautiful blue Nissan in a big way, though the sight of the automatic shifter comes as something of a disappointment.
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You can't go more than a block or two in Berkeley without running across some sort of interesting old car; we saw the Jag XK140 that Herr Johnson shot for us last week, and now we're going to look at a car that's nearly as rare (though not quite as sought after). The Toyota Corona has more or less disappeared from North American streets, but here's a '72 I found still thriving in Berkeley's upscale Claremont neighborhood. galleryPost('DOTSBEBerkeleyCorona', 9, '1972 Toyota Corona Down On The Berkeley Street');
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We used to dream about bringing over a full-zoot Mitsubishi Debonair from Japan, but that was before we met this '72 Toyota Crown Super Saloon in the flesh at the Motoring J Style show last Saturday. The window curtains and super-luxurious interior are impressive enough, but then you open the trunk and find a factory-installed refrigerator! Imagine being the owner of a chain of mob-connected Tokyo strip clubs back in '72, being driven around in your Super Saloon while your kneecap-breaking heavies follow in a Corona Mark II! The owner of this Crown brought it over from Japan a couple years ago, and we're already pestering the Gawker Overlords to buy us one as our Official Jalopnik Staff car (sure, the Overlords ignored our entreaties when we demanded the '38 Peugeot 302 , but we're not giving up!) galleryPost('jstylecrown', 9, '1972 Toyota Crown Super Saloon');
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We've only seen a couple of Lincolns in this series (a '69 and a '77 ), and with ten Cadillacs so far, it's time to look at another of Ford's big luxo-machines. I found this '72 parked on the same block as the '70 Volvo 164 and the '87 BMW L6 . I shot this car and the '70 Ford LTD on the same rainy day. Rain might be bad for the camera, but it makes old cars look more serious . This one is missing the front bumper, but otherwise looks pretty solid. The weird thing is the presence of what appears to be a real convertible top; as far as I know, you couldn't get a '72 Lincoln convertible from the factory. Must be a custom job. The Mark IV came standard with a big grunt-happy 460 engine, and at 4,800 pounds it needed all that torque. galleryPost('DOTS72MarkIV', 10, '1972 Lincoln Continental Down On The Street');
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Sometimes months can go by between my photographing of a DOTS car and posting those photographs. Today's car is a good example; I shot the original photos last August, but the island is overflowing with air-cooled Beetles and I have a glut of photos of such cars (yes, Beetle fans, I know I should be posting more of them... and I will, promise). But this particular exposed-engine Beetle, which I'm arbitrarily calling a '69 (though it could be from any year during the 68-72 span), got in some sort of messy collision in the meantime and then moved across town. At first, I thought I was looking at a different car, but checking plate numbers told the whole story. So what we have here is your standard mildly hot-rodded late-60s/early-70s Beetle, with exposed engine but retaining the factory wheels and hubcaps. This could easily be the original engine, or the 15th, and the displacement could be anything from 1200cc all the way up to a stroked "How much money you got?" mill...
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