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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're going to head over to the former Naval Air Station Alameda, where the Enterprise , Coral Sea , and Carl Vinson have been replaced by companies that make movies and absinthe. While the ex-base (now known as Alameda Point) is miles wide, it doesn't have many streets intended for parking and hardly anyone lives there full-time. That means the DOTS pickings aren't as good as the rest of the island, but I was still able to find this daily-driven '65 Comet parked near the old Officers' Club. We've already seen a 1965 Comet in Alameda (the Bechtle Mercury ), but that was a bottom-of-line 202. The Caliente, on the other hand, was the luxury version of the Comet, selling for $2,352 versus the $2,108 that penny-pinchers shelled out for the 202. Keep in mind, however, that the mechanically identical Ford Falcon coupe was just...
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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're going to head over to the former Naval Air Station Alameda, where the Enterprise , Coral Sea , and Carl Vinson have been replaced by companies that make movies and absinthe. While the ex-base (now known as Alameda Point) is miles wide, it doesn't have many streets intended for parking and hardly anyone lives there full-time. That means the DOTS pickings aren't as good as the rest of the island, but I was still able to find this daily-driven '65 Comet parked near the old Officers' Club. We've already seen a 1965 Comet in Alameda (the Bechtle Mercury ), but that was a bottom-of-line 202. The Caliente, on the other hand, was the luxury version of the Comet, selling for $2,352 versus the $2,108 that penny-pinchers shelled out for the 202. Keep in mind, however, that the mechanically identical Ford Falcon coupe was just...
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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. The island has several old Suburbans still racking up the miles; we've seen this '63 GMC Carryall and today we'll be looking at an equally weathered '65 Chevy. This truck parks about a half-block from the '65 Thunderbird and just around the corner from the '87 Mercedes-Benz 560SL , with at least a dozen Alameda DOTS cars living within a couple blocks. Sometimes you need to do a little Field Expedient Engineering to keep your doors shut, once you've turned over the odometer a few times. This truck has plenty of harmless surface rust, with every indication being that it's still about as solid as it was when LBJ was president (though the interior was a lot nicer back then). Why did this truck's original buyer decide to go with The General's two-door rather than International Harvester's four-door , in spite...
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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 an Alameda Mustang just a couple of days ago, but I'm making the rules here and I say there's no reason we can't have a two-Mustang week! I found this '65 parked on the same block as the '78 Datsun 280Z , the 1986 Toyota Corolla GT-S and the 1960 Cadillac . Alameda has plenty of first-generation Mustangs and I haven't been in any hurry to shoot all of them, but this one really caught my eye with its interesting mix of black-plate originality and no-hurry-to-paint-it primer patches. The vinyl top looks fairly recent, so most likely this car is undergoing one of those very slow restorations and being used as a driver in the meantime. Perhaps it will become a trailer queen once the project is done, but for now it shares the road with Tauruses and Sentras. The GT option package got you a 289 V8, disc brakes (which were still...
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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. Some are beaters, some are flawless, all are cool. Today, we're going to address the Thunderbird Deficit, with this '65 Thunderbird Landau I found parked just around the corner from the Corvair Van . So, that Thunderbird Deficit I mentioned earlier- it turns out we've seen only one Alameda Thunderbird in this series, and that was a gloriously hideous '61 . Now it's time to look at a nice 60s T-bird. Looks like the interior is in great shape, down to the factory AM radio. Judging from the sticker, it appears that the car's owner is a regular at Alameda's finest tiki bar . Speaking of this car's owner, a simple check of the Radiator Hoes site shows that it's my fellow Alameda East Ender, Swiskee. We've also seen Radiator Hoe Bon Bon 's Dart wagon , as the Hoes have a strong Alameda contingent. galleryPost...
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The pre-Malaise Chevelle is a good example of a once-ubiquitous car that has largely disappeared from the streets, due to a one-two-three-punch combo of vulnerability to rust, suitability for hoonage, and high collector value (the same three items are also applicable to the first-gen Camaro). We saw a '71 Chevelle Malibu and a pair of '69s last year, but that's been it for the Chevelle contingent in this series so far. Until today, because I've had these shots of a '65 coupe in reserve for a while and now seems like the time to bring 'em out. This car doesn't seem to move much, judging by the dusty windows, but it looks to be complete and fairly solid. I found it parked on the same block as the BMW 3.0 CSi , though I'm pretty sure they're not owned by the same person. Most of these cars came with 194-cube sixes or 283 small-block V8s, though the options list included the 300-horse 327 (you had to wait for '66 to get a big-block Chevelle from the factory...
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We've seen a late-60s Torino-based Ranchero and a Malaise Era Thunderbird-based Ranchero so far in this series, but how about the Falcon -based Ranchero? I found this cartruck parked next to the '69 Buick Electra 225 , and I suspect they were owned by the same person (the Buick has since departed, presumably sold). After spending the late 50s as a big, unwieldy cartruck based on the full-sized Ford Ranch Wagon, the Ranchero then became a small, easy-to-park Falcon cartruck. You could get this generation of Ranchero with a 144- or 170-cube inline six engine, or step up to the 260 or 289 Windsor V8 . This example doesn't show any 289 badges on the fenders, though it may have been fitted with a V8 since being built. Overall, it's a very solid and rust-free machine, and it's good to see it parked on the street every day. But was the Falcon-based Ranchero too small for serious truck use? I had a '60 for a while and it did fine for my purposes, but I'm not a big hauler...
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While we saw a Chevy truck about a month ago, the most recent Chevy pickup truck was way back in February. So today we're going to head over to a part of Alameda I've mostly ignored in this series (save for the '72 Mercury Monterey ): Bay Farm Island (if you're an Alameda old-timer) aka Harbor Bay Isle (if you prefer a name made up by the developer that built a lot of tract homes there in the 80s). While technically part of Alameda, BFI/HBI (which is not really an island; it's on the mainland, adjacent to the Oakland airport) was mostly built up after World War II, and thus most of the houses have garages. That means the pickings are slimmer for street-parked old cars... but they can still be found! The standard engine on the '65 Chevy pickup was the good ol' reliable 230-cube six-cylinder. Hey, wouldn't it be fun to swap in the Pontiac OHC version of this engine? OK, not as much fun as putting that engine in a Nova. I had the use of one of these trucks for...
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Hey, if you shoot enough photos of old cars on the streets of Alameda, sooner or later you'll get a shot that looks something like a Robert Bechtle painting! The photo above made me almost happy enough to forget my frustration that there's a super-original, 4-speed-equipped '68 AMX parked a couple doors down from this Comet... in a driveway , and thus off-limits to DOTS. The pain! And believe me, Alameda has plenty of DOTSworthy cars parked tantalizingly out of reach in driveways. Say, this Volvo Bertone, not to mention a 50s Land Rover, several Barracudas, a showroom-condition big-block '65 Impala, and... well, you get the idea. But never mind that- let's look at this fairly solid Comet, which is fair game for the roving DOTS camera! Charles Bukowski drove a Comet, though his was a few years older than this one. Still, that bestows some literary cachet upon the little Mercury. The '65 Comet 202 2-door listed at $2,108, which was $131 more than the mechanically identical...
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It's about damn time that I found an A-body Barracuda for this series, since some of the baddest cars on the island back when I was in high school were '64-66 Barracudas. The Valiant-based early Barracuda didn't weigh much, so droppping a crazy 340 or 360 in one resulted in something that would hold its own against the Mustangs, Camaros, and Novas (not to mention the big-block GM A-bodies). This example is a little bit rough- well, actually, it's a total beater- but it's still good to see it parked on the street. It's got an extremely funky paint job, which appears to be done in latex house paint in sort of a two-tone textured application. There's some body rust, but just the usual Bay Area variety caused by rainy winters. Maybe it wasn't a great idea to paint the grille, but once you get started with a paint roller it's hard to stop. This car probably has a Slant Six (the 225 was standard on the '65 Barracuda), but maybe it has a 273 or better under...
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Given how ubiquitous this generation of Impala used to be, you'd think they'd be easier to find on the street these days; in fact, the 1965 full-sized Chevrolet still holds the all-time American sales record for a single car model. But they're hard to find, and thus it's been months since our last DOTS Impala . Unlike that one, however, this Impala is in very nice shape (as was the '65 Super Sport we saw even more months back). This car lives on a quiet side street in Alameda's wealthy East End, which means it's less likely to be nailed by drunks in '85 J2000s or stolen by hoodlums jacked up on goofballs than a car elsewhere on the island. Here's proof that this car has lived in the East Bay for most of its life: a Charlie Finley-era "Swingin' A's" decal on the front bumper, dating back to the late 60s or early 70s. What incredibly toxic substances were used in those old stickers to make them last so long? Does the original 283 still...
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How long has it been since we last saw an Alameda Rambler? Since July , that's how long... and that's just too long to be deprived of pre-AMC-nameplate Kenosha machinery! So here's a pretty clean '65 American to start our day. This car parks next to the '61, so we have to assume they're owned by the same person. The 220 was the entry-level Rambler for '65; you could buy a two-door for just $1979. That was $70 cheaper than a Dart 170, but $2 more than a Falcon and $11 more than a Chevy II. But when you went with the Rambler, you got some cool stuff. Not just the infamous steamy-window-enhancing fold-flat seats, but styling touches like this side mirror. There's a certain amount of Dart-esque styling to be found here... although one could make the case that Chrysler's designers were influenced by the Rambler's styling. You got a 90-horse flathead six (yes, a flathead! in 1965!) as the standard powerplant with your American 220, but another $84.95 would...
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After we saw the beat-to-shit '68 Mustang last month, I promised we'd also see some nicer examples of Ford's hot-selling Falcon sibling. Well, Alameda has quite a few rough, Bondo-laden 60s Mustangs, but it's been tough to find pretty ones; I suspect what little garage space exists on the island is full of show-quality California Specials and the like. This '65 parks on the street every day, however, and it's in decent shape. If the Ford Motor Company still exists 50 years from now, they'll be cannibalizing this grille design for mesh-tired cars sold to Moon Colony residents. Hey, it looks great- why think up anything new? This car is equipped with the ol' reliable 289 small-block under the hood... ...or is it? Ford used the 4-lug setup only on their 6-cylinder-equipped Mustangs, which means this car has had either an engine transplant or a far cheaper emblem transplant. But who cares? This car has a manual transmission! Sure, it's probably a 3-speed...
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We've seen a couple of GMC trucks recently in this series, plus a Ford-badged Mazda and a Datsun , but we haven't seen a Dodge truck for months. Here's a work truck that parks in my neighborhood; usually it's full of ladders and lumber, but I managed to catch it in an unladen state. As far as I can tell, there's no difference between the 1965 and 1966 Dodge D100s, so I'm arbitrarily choosing the former year. Anyone out there who can point out the identifying features that can be used to ascertain the exact year, please do so. I'm going to have this problem with most Detroit trucks of this era, since they tended to keep the same design for multiple years. In any case, the 100 was the half-ton version. Standard engine was the good ol' Slant Six, but you could get one with a 318 (power-crazed hoons opted for the 426 wedge, of course). Judging from the sound this truck makes in action, I'd say it's a Slant Six machine. This truck has been working its...
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