|
Browse by Tags
All Tags » Alameda » 1962 ( RSS)
-
|
Remember the '62 New Yorker we saw nearly a year ago? We all liked its evil-beater look, but these cars looked pretty good when nice and shiny, too. It was quite a find when I spotted this '62 in the island's East End, parked in the exact spot in which the 1971 Chevy Blazer normally parks. I see the Chrysler parked there every once in a while, never at the same time as the Blazer, so I suspect they're owned by the same person. Love it or hate it, but you can't ignore this face. Like the nose of a space cruiser! Maybe Chrysler will retro-ize this look at some point. And the taillights- wow! These cars didn't just look good; the 300s could get going pretty well, too. The standard engine was a 305-horsepower 383; if that wasn't enough, you could spring for the dual-quad 413 in the 300H, which gave you a mighty 380 horsepower... and if that wasn't enough, a 405-horse version was available. Sadly, you couldn't get a 4-speed from the factory, but dealers back...
|
-
|
With all the vintage GMC and Chevy trucks on the streets of Alameda, I need to be sure I don't neglect the Fords and Dodges when DOTS Truck Monday rolls around. We had a '64 Ford F-100 recently, but it's been several months since our last Dodge pickup. This '62 seems to be a work in progress, since it seems to alternate between being up on jackstands in the driveway and parked on the street with a drain pan under the engine. I'm not sure whether it moves under its own power or gets pushed between the two locations, but these trucks are so simple that it shouldn't take much longer before it's driving regularly. I'm not 100% sure that this Dodge is a '62; it might be a '63. Year-to-year changes were pretty subtle for work trucks back then. This example has the classic California body rust, which generally takes decades to get all the way through the sheet metal (unless you live right near the ocean, in which case the process happens much more quickly...
|
-
|
Even though Alameda has plenty of 60s Mustangs, their Falcon siblings are very rare on the island. In fact, we've seen just one Falcon in this series so far. And it's not like the Mustang situation, where I have a huge stash of cars photographed and ready to go- this '62 is the only additional Alameda Falcon I've been able to find (well, unless you count the Falcon-based early-60s Ranchero cartruck I shot a while back). Here is that Falcon, which lives on a busy downtown street and serves as its owner's daily driver. Normally I'd say nonfunctional hood scoops are lame, but the one on the Falcon looks great. Here's where you Edsel aficionados can tell us about how Robert McNamara (who grew up a couple miles away in Oakland and married an Alameda High girl) killed the Edsel in order to push the Falcon... right before he switched to the Vietnam War as his next big project. Did the Falcon lead directly to Khe Sanh? In any case, I recommend The Fog of War to anyone...
|
|
|
|