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Here's Nice Price Or Crack Pipe once again, the day after the Opel GT Batmobile made NPOCP history! You see, for the first time we've got the majority of voters opting for the Nice Price side of the poll; admittedly, the voting is 173 to 172 at the time of this writing, but that's still a win for the BatmOpel! Today we've got another machine that might present something of a dilemma; the original 351 Cleveland/4-speed combo makes it cool, as do the factory hubcaps and the fact that it's always been a camper… but a Buy It Now of $12,500? What do you think? galleryPost('NPOCPRancheroCamper', 3, '1973 Ranchero Camper For Sale'); Thanks to The Kid for the tip! [eBay Motors] What do you think of $12,500 for a '73 Ranchero with camper shell? ( polls )
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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 saw a '65 Mercury Comet Caliente last week, and before that the '65 Comet 202 and the '64 Comet Cyclone . No shortage of Falcon-based comets on the island… but how about the Maverick -based Comet? Mavericks themselves, sure- a '70 and two 74s - but now we're going to look at our first Malaise Comet. The Mercury Division couldn't do a whole lot to de-Maverickize the Comet, but they were able to get these distinctive taillights on the car. Sure, they hurt your eyes even after 35 years, but they're definitely of their time . I found this car less than a block from the '65 IHC Travelall . The '73 Comet 2-door listed at $2,432, which was 102 bucks more than the equivalent Maverick (and $55 more than a 2-door base Chevy Nova). The 200-cubic-inch inline six engine was standard, but you could upgrade to the 250 six or...
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Because I've become obsessed with finding at least one semi-focused shot of the pair of Fiat 128s my parents bought in the early 1970s (when the 128 was the cheapest new four-door sold in America), I've been spending a lot of time digging through boxes of hopelessly jumbled family photos. No Fiat photos yet, but I did find this DOTSBE Vintage Edition shot, nominally of my grandmother- sporting some really cool cateye glasses- posing in front of some cable cars in San Francisco, but the real subject of this image is a new BMW 2002… and is that a Fiat dealership in the background? What other wonders may be seen here? Make the jump to find out! galleryPost('HydeBeach1973', 3, 'Hyde And Beach 1973'); Yes indeed, that's a big FIAT sign down Hyde Street. Who knows, maybe that's the very dealership at which the legendary Martin family 128s (which lasted about three years apiece) were purchased! The photograph is dated October 1973 and was shot on Hyde Street, facing...
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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. Most of the time, the manner in which I locate and photograph these cars follows the same pattern: I grab my camera and walk to a neighborhood I haven't checked out in a while and shoot anything interesting I find along the way. Other times I spot a car while I'm driving somewhere, and I pull over and shoot it. Easy enough. Then we've got the cars I stalk ; I see one driving or someone tells me about another, and I spend weeks trying to catch them parked in a spot suitable for photography. This Manta is such a car. At least three readers have emailed me its usual parking location (on a crazy side street barely wide enough for one car to drive), but I could never catch the Opel when it wasn't absent or sandwiched by other cars blocking the front and rear views. Finally, when heading over to San Francisco one day, I found the Manta in...
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While at the Motoring J Style show in May, I spotted an amazingly original Datsun 510 two-door parked in the exhibition hall. Turns out it was owned by David Swig, the guy in charge of the event, and now I've managed to get him to bring the car to the former Alameda Naval Air Station (where they now make absinthe ) for some photos. The car was purchased from its original owner, who always garaged it and for many years drove it just once a month or so; this Datsun is solid Compare its condition to that of most 510s, which have spent their lives in glorious clouds of tire smoke and- all too often- wrapped around telephone poles! galleryPost('OrangeDatsun510', 6, '1973 Datsun 510');
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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! 1973 was quite a memorable year; engine compression ratios were down as US emissions laws sprouted some sharp claws, the Arabs got so pissed about their ass-whooping in the Yom Kippur war that they cut off the oil , and Richard Nixon was forced to fire Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox in the Saturday Night Massacre , in order to save the country from those pinko traitors who would see a Viet Cong flag flying over the White House and celebrate their victory by dumping a megaton of pure LSD in the nation's water supply! Yes, that was a simpler time, a happier bygone era captured in little square Instamatic photographs; think about that next time you're hearing those oldies wheezing out of the speakers at a car show and some grumpy old guy sitting on an ice chest next to his numbers-matching '74 Charger gripes about how much better things were...
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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 . After the Shark and Minnow Midget/Continental combo, it only seemed right to share some photos of another street-parked Midget (ideally, one not overshadowed by some monster land yacht), and Kitt has shot such a car for us in her South Denver neighborhood. This one's for sale, and instead of a price it's got a printout of the NADA Guides retail value; hey, it's worth a try! I've done a fair amount of Midget driving, and they're a lot of fun… provided you carry every tool you own in the boot- you'll need 'em, thanks to the one-two punch of Lucas Electrics and SU carbs- and don't mind the disconcerting experience of viewing the undersides of truck trailers on the freeway. galleryPost('DOTSBEDenverMidget', 6, '1973 MG Midget Down On The Denver Street'); DOTS FAQ
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It's time for Nice Price Or Crack Pipe once again, where the readers decide whether a car's seller has anything close to a grip on reality when it comes to asking price. Last time we were here, the $7,900 Chrysler Cordoba got a Nice Price thumbs-up from 48% of voters; not a majority, but the closest we've seen yet. galleryPost('NPOCPPinto', 3, 'Pinto Squire For 20 Grand'); Old guys like me, who suffered through a childhood of Pinto passengerhood followed by teenage years of beater Pintos clogging up the roads (now I'm having a PTSD flashback of being a helpless passenger in a Pinto driven by a very dramatic high-school girlfriend who yanked the parking brake at 80 MPH on the Nimitz Freeway- in the rain- so that the resulting loop-de-loop spinout- miraculously missing other vehicles and the guardrails and ending safely on the shoulder- would teach me a lesson about… well, I forget, so it wasn't as effective a move as she'd hoped) might rejoice that...
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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. 1960s Volvos haven't played a large role in this series; so far we've seen this '66 Amazon , this '69 144 , and this '69 P1800 . Now we're going to add a rare 1800ES wagon, which I found parked along Alameda's San Francisco Bay shoreline (not far from the '68 GMC pickup ). The 1800ES wagon was only made for two years, 1972 and 1973. This '73 listed new at $5,150, or $793 more than a new Olds Vista Cruiser. Actually, the Chevy Vega Kammback wagon was closer in size and styling- though not in build quality- and its $2,323 price tag was less than half that of the Volvo. Perhaps the Datsun 610 wagon was a more effective Volvo sales-stealer back in '73; its price tag was $3,195. This example looks pretty solid for a 35-year-old driver; I haven't seen it since, so I suspect its owner was just making a beach trip...
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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. There's been just one Corvette so far in this series (also a '73), and I assume so few are on the street for the same reason so few first-generation Camaros are on the street: Car Show Guys! Yes, most old Corvettes now live in garages, emerging only for shows and cruise nights; I'm thinking of shooting a few early C4s for this series, but even those are pretty hard to find parked on the street these days. This car is in pretty nice shape and worth plenty, yet here it is parked on the street in Alameda's West End. I don't see it every day, so I suspect it lives at least part-time in a garage somewhere. It does get used for transportation, much to the envy of all those gilded-cage show/cruise-only Vettes. This is the first Malaise Era Corvette, with power out of the standard 350 down to 190 horsepower. Some of that power loss was...
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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! Italy held on to its PCH Superpower crown in our last Choose Your Eternity poll, with the Alfa Romeo Duetto taking a 53-47 victory over the British contestant. After admiring the lovely surfboard-friendly Hang Ten Dodge Dart in yesterday's Moment of Zen , we had no choice today but to pit a basket case totally restorable Hang Ten against an equally awesome Malaise Era Special Edition AMC, complete with tape stripes and low-performance engine. The Hang 10 Dodge Dart didn't come with a surfboard, but it did feature a rear seat that folded down, enabling Slant-Six-powered hodaddies to avoid that unsightly board-out-the-window look. You got cool Hang 10 graphics and a bunch of other special stuff to make you forget that the base Slant Six only made 95 horsepower and the 318 V8 just 145. We all want a Hang 10, of course, but where can you find one these...
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Everyone was pretty impressed by the Aston Martins driving from Panama to Alaska , but we must assume that rally was loaded with top-flight mechanics equipped with the correct tools . How would you feel about buying a Lotus Europa in San Francisco, hopping in, and driving straight to Alabama- across mountains and desert in the height of summer, with room for only a couple of hammers in the toolkit, no less? Reader Matt has done just that, and he's been kind enough to send us photos and a well-written description of his adventure. Jump, jump! [Picasaweb] galleryPost('XCountryEuropaTop', 3, '1973 Lotus Europa Drives California To Alabama Part 1'); galleryPost('XCountryEuropaJump', 10, '1973 Lotus Europa Drives California To Alabama Part 2'); July 1st my dad and I bailed out of a visiting with my grandmother in Kansas and flew out to San Francisco to buy my dream car - a Lotus Europa. I had been lusting over these cars for about a year and half. Race car...
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You think the supply of old cars and trucks parked on the streets of Alameda will dry up, now that we've hit the 300 point? I doubt it, not when you can still find Early Malaise Era landyachts like this Electra being used as daily transportation. Five-dollar gas be damned! I found this car parked near the former Alameda Naval Air Station, where thousands of nuclear weapons once sat it earthen bunkers and thousands of sailors once drove second-gen Camaros. Nowadays they shoot movies and make vodka at the old NAS, and the sound of A6s and P3s no longer competes with the roar of small-block Chevy engines. Heraldic crests! Knights in armor! Seeing this hood ornament, I find it impossible to believe that Buick didn't offer an Electra Brougham for '73. Surely there must be some mistake! Just in time for the Arab oil embargo of '73, this 4,682-pound dreamboat purred down the highway courtesy of a 210-horse 455 engine. That seems like a pretty poor power-to-weight ratio, but keep...
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In much the same manner as the '73 Mustang and '73 Cougar , the Chevelle for 1973 put on quite a few pounds over its predecessor... just in time for the Arab Oil Embargo . Until now, I hadn't been able to find any of the "big" Malaise Chevelles, though we have seen examples of the angular '64-67 Chevelle as well as the more rounded '68-72 variety. Early emission-control equipment was pretty crude, so compression ratios had to come down, down, down to meet the new federal standards. 1973 was the first year of the Malaise Era (I made up the term, so I get to decide that stuff), and the 350 in this car was rated at either 145 horsepower (two-barrel carburetor) or 175 horsepower (Quadrajet). That hurts, but worse was in store. 3,580 pounds. That's the factory shipping weight of the V8 Chevelle for '73. That means the Chevelle scaled in at 45 pounds more than the weight of the V8-equipped two-door '66 Impala (and about the same as the projected weight...
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When you spot a Citroën SM parked in front of a Starbucks in the San Fernando Valley (also known as the Pornography Capitol Of The Universe) and it's nighttime , what do you do? I'd set a huge gas-soaked tire fire on the pavement to provide enough light for photography, but LateralGPhotography had the gear and the chops to get some great photos just with ambient lighting. Make the jump to see the whole gallery and get a Valley Bonus! galleryPost('DOTSBEWHSM', 3, 'Citroen SM Down On The West Hills Street');
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