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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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newVideoPlayer("/70s_Ford_Capri_Germany_494.flv", 506, 423,""); When you're jumping off a cliff while strapped in your German-flag-colored hang glider and clad in the finest of polyester duds, you don't want your special lady to pick you up in some jive-ass tape-striped Opel. You want her to roar down the mountain in a high-performance Ford Capri! Thanks once again to Franzouse for the tip.
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Out of all the old Fords at the Billetproof Nor-Cal show, this one may have been our very favorite (yes, even beating out the undeniably awesome Maserati-powered Ford ). Why? It's really a Malaise Era Ford Granada! Jump away to get the rest of the story. galleryPost('BP08GranadaRod', 3, 'Granada Rod At Billetproof NorCal 2008'); Its creator had a bare, beat-to-hell shell sitting on one side of the garage… and a $100 '79 Ford Granada sitting on the other side. You can see where this is going, right? For a budget of less than a thousand bucks, he handcrafted most of the bodywork (including a grille made from a household wall-heater grate), dropped in the Granada drivetrain- dead-stock 302 engine, C4 transmission, driveshaft, rear end, with some $3 Honda Accord springs holding the back end up, then installed the Granada interior as well. Tilt steering wheel, green vinyl, speedometer, the works! The attention to detail- and obsession with building the whole project as...
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Did Ford really build a twin-turbocharged pickup truck based on the Pinto in 1971? The seller of this "sweet rust free 1 of 1 factory built pinto race truck twin turbo 4 cyl bumper dragging beast" says they did, and that "ford picked me over bob glidden to drive cause he couldnt handle this monster." If it's for real and there's documentation to prove it, $15,000 is a pretty good deal. If not... well the going rate on Pintocheros might be a few notches below 15K. Cast your vote and we'll see how this sorts out. Thanks to LTDScott for the tip! [Mautofied] Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.
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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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We know, The Dude's Gran Torino was a 1973 model, but this '74 would have done an equally good job as Jeff Bridges' movie ride. Hollywood stardom eluded this Malaise Ford sedan, however, and now it awaits a trip to the Schnitzer Steel facility at the Port Of Oakland. galleryPost('DOTJ74GranTorino', 3, '1974 Ford Gran Torino Down On The Junkyard');
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While Lincoln-Mercury dealers sold the European-made Ford Capri in North America, the cars themselves had no marque. Just to make things more confusing, Ford branded the later Fox Mustang-clone and Mazda 323-based Capris with Mercury emblems. Anyway, none of that matters for this car, which I spotted in an East Bay wrecking yard last weekend, because it has a date with the cold jaws that will get it ready for another spin of the steel-reincarnation wheel. galleryPost('DOTJ76Crapi', 3, '1976 Capri Down On The Junkyard');
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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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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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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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It's been tough to avoid giving most of our DOTS Truck Monday airtime to General Motors products, since Alameda has more Chevy and GMC trucks than any other variety. We've been especially light on 70s Ford pickups, with just the Frankenstein Mix-N-Match F100 so far, so let's start up our Malaise Era 120-horse V8s and take a look at the kind of truck that would have brought a smile to Billy Carter's face (though Billy preferred a Chevy for his personal ride . I'm sure I could find many more mid-70s F-series trucks on the island, since they hold together pretty well and are still able to earn their keep these days. This truck lives on one of the most DOTS-centric blocks in Alameda. Not only does the '66 Mercedes-Benz 250S we see in the background of this photo live nearby, so do the Double Cab '71 Chevy pickup and 1975 Chevy El Camino . I'm pretty sure the current level of crazy gas prices won't keep this 3/4-ton beast of burden away from the job sites...
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Alameda has plenty of 1964-73 Mustangs on the street. So many, in fact, that I've been taking a sort of "mañana, mañana" attitude about photographing most of them (this also happens with 60s GM pickups and air-cooled Volkswagens). This leads me to wonder why I never see any first-generation Camaros or Firebirds parked on the island's streets; they were made in vast numbers and aren't worth much more than Mustangs now, so what happened to them? Hooned into oblivion? Feel free to weigh in on that burning issue as we take a look at a nice example of the "big" first-generation Mustang. The '73 Mustang convertible, while based on the same chassis as the original 64-1/2 model, weighed in at a hefty 3,198 pounds. That was 584 pounds more than the first Mustang convertible, and matters weren't helped by the Malaise engine selection for '73: the base six groaned out a miserable 88 horses (versus 101 for the '64-1/2 six), while the 302 V8 didn't...
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The Ford Ranchero cartruck went through numerous platform changes over the years, with the full-size sedan-based '57-59s, the compact Falcon-based '60-66s, the mid-sized Fairlane/Torino-based '68-76s, and the bloato-mid-sized LTD-based '77-79s. We saw a beige-and-brown two-tone '79 last summer, and now I've found another two-tone '79 on the island. Those stacked headlights and monstrous turn signal lights are as 1979 as odd-even gas days. Hey, maybe we'll have those again! Even though cartrucks aren't really set up for serious heavy hauling, this Ranchero's bed is spacious enough to really test the limits of that LTD rear suspension. How much gravel can you haul in one load? How many pinball machines? How many street-sign shooting armed drunks and associated cases of Mickey's Big Mouth? Cartruck tradition is firmly behind the "test the load limits" school of thought. You got a 151-horse 351 when you bought a new 1979 Ranchero. Don't...
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The Mercury Cougar has been reinvented many times, but we've only seen a couple of incarnations in this series. We've seen the lean and mean '68 Cougar and the Bloated Final Year Of The Rebadged Mustang Cougar , but what about the Farrah Fawcett-Approved Cougar? I found this appealingly rough '75 parked across the street from the '82 280ZX Turbo and quite close to one of Alameda's non-Buick Skyhawks . This car definitely runs and drives, but with gas prices closing in on five bucks there's no telling how much longer it will be possible for its owner to quench the thirst of its 351, 400, or 460. Now that's class! A Cougar emblem in the little opera window! See, the Malaise Era wasn't en tire ly about diminished expectations- you could get down and funky with that special someone in the luxurious vinyl comfort of your Cougar's back seat, while the same activities in a cramped 60s Cougar would be more like a game of Twister inside a packing crate. Don't...
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The blowout Choose Your Eternity polls are fun, but we really enjoy the nail-bitingly close races... which is what we got yesterday, with the Roots-blown Old Beetle just barely beating the Pro Street Peugeot in a 175-165 vote split. Does that mean a German car just upset Project Car Hell GigaTeraPower France, or does the Detroit engine water down the 200-proof Frenchness of the Peugeot? We'll leave that question open for now, because today we're going to see how an Italian basket case fares against a brutalized European Ford! When a car ad leads off with the statement "This is another car that I have exhumed from my graveyard," you know you're in for a real treat. Better install some good air-conditioning in your garage, because it'll get mighty hot in there once you drag this '76 Lancia Scorpion inside! You Yurpeans might know this car as the Montecarlo , but don't let the similarity fool you- the US version had 81 horsepower instead of 120, because Yurp...
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