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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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newVideoPlayer("/Redd_Foxx_Colt_45_494.flv", 506, 423,""); What did hep early-70s skiers crave most on the slopes? You got it- tall cans of Colt .45! Aaah, nothing feels quite as good as staggering helplessly into a snowbank, your ski pants sodden with unnoticed urine and the meat of your knuckles shredded from some other skier's busted bicuspids- yes, that's what skiing is all about! But what if you've run out of 16-ouncers and you've assigned Redd Foxx to beer-run duty, and he's driving "Redd's Sled," which appears to be a rally-prepped, fender-flared proto-Colt/crypto-Galant of some sort? Hilarity ensues! Bonus points for anyone who can identify the car; I've been watching this thing like it's the Zapruder Film, and the best I can do is interpret those round pillar emblems as probable Colt items and say "Colt with weird taillights" or maybe "Cricket after a Bondo attack."
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Apparently shot by Chrysler marketers in the same rock quarry as the Hang 10 Dodge Dart , this photograph of a model in kicky bellbottoms posed next to a 1974 Dodge Sportsman van creates more questions than it answers: Why is she dressed like a Disco Office Cowgirl Quaalude Dealer? Is she going to load a bunch of gravel into that van? If so, why bring the passenger van with windows and upholstery? Will the Malaise 318 deliver enough power to get the van out of the quarry?
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We like to see a sampling of junkyard wares from around the world, and Slantsick has added to our Rusty Iron Grand Tour by photographing some of the more interesting vehicles at C.I.A. Salvage of Limerick, Maine. Make the jump to see the whole gallery and read Slantsick's list of vehicles. galleryPost('DOTJSlantsickMaine', 3, 'Old Cars And Trucks Down On The Maine Junkyard'); Pics taken at C.I.A. Salvage, Limerick Maine- May 5, 2008. I'll leave it to you to wax poetic about the cars if you so choose and/or make jokes at rural Maine's expense, etc. 1) 1946-48 Dodge sedan 2) hood mascot of same 3) 1952 Kaiser Manhattan 4) same 5) 1955 Kaiser Manhattan 6) 1957 Ford firetruck, January 08 7) same, May 08 8) 1960s Falcon Clubwagon 9) 1964 Imperial Crown Coupe- one of 5233 10) tailpanel mascot of same 11) rear side view 12) 1966 Plymouth Belvedere II- 273 V8/auto, For Sale sign on windshield asking $2K 13) nose of same 14) rear 3/4 of same 15) 1967 Chevy Bel Air 16...
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The '65 Barracuda won our Favorite DOTS Chrysler A-Body Poll back in March, but since that time I've found this '75 Dart Swinger. Would the Swinger, with its name conjuring up images of Malaise Era key parties, have triumphed over the Barracuda? Perhaps I'll have another A-body poll, once we've seen a few more of them; until then, we can only speculate. The Swinger was the name Chrysler put on the 2-door Dart with the Custom mid-level trim package. The Special Edition series was the priciest Dart, though the real hot ticket was the $254 "Hang Ten" package, which got you surfer-esque graphics and tape stripes. The standard engine on the '75 Dart was the 96-horsepower Slant Six 225, though you could get the Dart 360 Sport with a V8 boasting 200 horses. This Swinger is in decent condition, with all four hubcaps still present and accounted for and no visible rust. The vinyl top is bad (of course), but other than that it's weathered 33 years quite well....
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How about an engine family that included V6, V8, and V10 variants and is still being manufactured today after more than 40 years? Starting with the 273-cube V8 in 1964 (itself a descendant of the mid-50s-vintage A series engine) and proceeding through vast numbers of 318s and 360s (and let us not forget the screamin' 340 Six-Pack pictured above), the LA design ended up as the basis of the 488 and 505 V10s used in Vipers and SRT-10s. While the Slant Six has pretty well established itself as the top contender for the All-Time Most Bulletproof Detroit Engine Award, its 318 stablemate makes a strong bid for second place. [Allpar]
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Is it really possible that it's been two months since our last Mopar A-body in this series? Like air-cooled VWs, Chrysler A-bodies are so plentiful in Alameda that I tend to lose track of when the last time I DOTS-ized one (also like air-cooled VWs, I've owned a few Slant Six A-bodies and feel much affection for them). So here comes a nice solid 4-door Dart, which lives on the same block as the Mercedes-Benz 280SEL that came in second in yesterdays DOTS Benz poll . The Dart is one of the few vintage Detroit cars in which I prefer the six-cylinder engine to the V8, but then the Slant Six makes even the 318 seem flaky. Of course, a 340/4-speed Dart might convince me to give up the Leaning Tower of Power. This Dart gets driven every day, and there's no telling how many times its 5-digit odometer has been turned over. Check out those Buick hubcaps, which actually look pretty good on a Dodge. This car parks in front of a house in which a high-school girlfriend lived back in the day...
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newVideoPlayer("71_Charger_Topper_476.flv", 463, 387,""); A certain 60s movie and a certain 70s TV show have ensured that the 1968-70 Chargers will always overshadow all the others. But what about the '71-74 Charger? The 1973 model was the best-selling Charger , and in 1971 you could get whitewalls, hubcaps... and the landau vinyl roof - at no extra charge!
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Lots of folks saw the junked '78 Dodge Magnum the other day and thought "What the heck is that thing?" But there's a man in Kansas City who knows his Magnums... knows them so well, in fact, that he understood the essential need to add Charger Daytona-style wings to two of them. And, crazily enough, they look way better than the mental image one gets from hearing the description "'78 Magnum With Daytona/Superbird wing." Thanks to David for the photos; make the jump to read his description of these fine classic automobiles. galleryPost('MagnumDaytonas', 5, 'Magnum Daytonas, Kansas City Style'); There's a guy here in Kansas City with three Magnums. Two of them have the elusive Superbird wing styling option. I've never been able to track down the owner. He parks on top of the garage to preserve the awesomeness. He has the yellow one, the silver one, and then a bondo'n'primer beater he drives infrequently.
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It tells you something about the wrath of numbers-matching/date-coded Mopar fanatics that the seller of this '71 Challenger station wagon feels compelled to start off his description with the statement: "Not orig anymore and has not been since 1973 so # guys get over it. So no emailing me telling me its not correct and I should put it back orig to me its worthless that way as it would look like any other challenger out there." This thing would be cool enough simply as an E-body wagon, but it has an Olds Vista Cruiser roof! Potrzebie! Imagine having this thing in your garage... right next to your Demonpage and Valiantpage, of course. Thanks to Yuri for the tip! [eBay Motors] galleryPost('ChallengerVistaCruiser', 6, '1971 Vista Challenger Cruiser');
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Not content to rest on her laurels for having found a street-parked Maserati Mistral , reader Kitt continues to make a case for Denver as a worthy rival for Alameda in the DOTS Intergalactic Superchampionship. This time she's found a solid-looking '71 Dodge Camper Special... only where's the camper? Make the jump to see the rest of the photos. galleryPost('DOTSBECamperSpecialTop', 6, '1971 Dodge Camper Special Part 1'); galleryPost('DOTSBECamperSpecialJump', 29, '1971 Dodge Camper Special Part 2');
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Even though we saw a Dodge truck just a couple weeks back , it's been much longer since we saw our last Dodge pickup . That means it's time for us to feast our eyes on this industrial-strength Power Wagon. The grille design means it's either a '70 or a '71, but once again I'm (mildly) ashamed to admit I can't figure out the exact year of a DOTS vehicle. Power Wagon experts, fill in the blanks! In any case, this is one of the last of the original American Power Wagons. What a name: Power Wagon! Too bad there's no reactor in the bed, because then it could be the Nuclear Power Wagon. This truck lives on the island's East End, in a parking-challenged neighborhood, and it's clearly someone's daily driver. Must be fun parallel-parking this brute! Sure, it gets 8 MPG and the ride feels like a shopping cart in a rock quarry, but the driver of this truck can snort in derision at drivers of luxurious modern pickups. galleryPost('DOTS70PowerWagon'...
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