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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 again, and we might as well make it Chevy Truck Monday while we're at it! I found this work truck parked on a busy East End street, quite close to the '65 Thunderbird , and it's still earning its keep well into its fifth decade on the planet. There's something so right about a camper shell on a truck like this, though all the paint buckets and ladders I often see in the bed indicate that Travels With Charley style adventures aren't in the offing for this camper. Would anyone have imagined, back in '66, that this truck would still be relevant more than 40 years in the future, with its lack of nuclear reactor? Back then, a 42-year-old truck would have been a 1924 model- ancient! Of course, with its gas-swilling I6 or V8 powerplant, this truck's relevance may finally meet a challenge it can't surmount...
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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're going to look at our fifth Alameda Lincoln today; of the first five, the suicide-door primered '69 was the crowd favorite in the Favorite DOTS Lincoln poll . Today's car is another suicide-door model, and the oldest of the bunch as well. This car has had a mild donk treatment, but it's just the wheels- no suspension destruction, bubbly purple window tint, or rhinestone emblems indicating wheel diameter. If you like the way it looks with these wheels, great… and if you don't, it could be switched back to factory wheels and hubcaps in a matter of minutes. For '66, the four-door sedan Continental listed at $5,750, which was 169 bucks more than the Cadillac DeVille four-door hardtop and just $17 more than the Imperial four-door. The Lincoln came with a 340-horse 462 engine, the Cadillac had a 340-horse 429, and the Imperial...
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Those of you who read the Down On The Street FAQ over the weekend know that some of the machines we see in this series don't live on the street full-time. Most do, but every so often I'll find an obvious non-daily-driver that's just visiting, or maybe getting a rare exposure to the world outside of the garage. This immaculate E-Type is such a car; I spotted it parked in front of the island's most popular sports bar a while back and I haven't seen it since. I haven't been able to get my greasy mitts on many of these cars, so I can't claim any great depth of E-Type knowledge. However, I'm going to guess this is a '66 model (based on the dash and taillights) and hope that I'm pretty close. Jaguar experts, feel free to weigh in on this burning question. This car sold new for $5,580, which was about a thousand bucks more than a '66 Corvette Stingray coupe with 427 and 4-speed (that info is for those of you who wish to price out the cars in the Jan...
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After almost a month since we last saw an Alameda Mercedes-Benz in this series, we're due again. Old Mercedes sedans are all over town (and, most likely, all over half the towns in the world), and they're so ageless that I often go right past them when eyeballing for potential DOTS cars. It's just that they've always been around ; not in huge numbers, but present in the background. I found this 250S on the same block as the '75 El Camino and the Double Cab '71 Chevy Pickup . This big Benz is in very nice original condition, with the interior remaining miraculously nice even after decades of California sun. List price on this car when new was $5,747, a couple hundred bucks more than a Cadillac DeVille. Which car was a better bet to last 500,000 miles? And now, because polls are fun, let's have one to see which DOTS Mercedes-Benz is the crowd favorite: Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your...
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It's been very difficult to find non-beater 60s Mustangs parked on the island's streets; I see quite a few nice ones driving around, but they must live in garages. We've seen this fairly solid '65 and this beat-to-hell '68 so far, and today we're going to look at another rough- but fully functional- example of the breed. This '66 lives right around the corner from the Ketchup und Mustard VW Bus and just down the street from the Evil '69 Nomad , so it's in good company. You can tell by the number of lug nuts (visible on each of the three hubcapless wheels) that this car started life as a six-banger machine. That doesn't mean that it has a six-banger now, of course... but that's the way to bet. Probably a Granada 250. The thing about beater 60s cars is that they always retain some vestige of their former glory, since there's so much ornamentation that some of it is bound to survive. This car does serve as somebody's everyday transportation...
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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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It's been quite a while since we last saw a Mercedes-Benz down on Alameda's streets , and that's partly because I've set a cutoff year of 1970 for these cars to make the DOTS grade. See, back in the days before M-B's quality control department went straight to hell recognized economic reality, you could count on your Benz to keep going for interstellar numbers of miles. This means that you still see plenty of 1970s examples on the road, so they just don't seem all that special. But maybe I'm wrong; take the poll below and let me know where you stand on this vital issue. First of all, this might not be a '66; damn if I can spot the minuscule differences between model years on these things. Experts, let us know if you can tell us the exact year, and what the clues are. That vertical speedometer is a thing of beauty. Even in its decayed state, this car's interior looks stolidly luxurious. There was no doubting what type of car you were looking at with this grille. Too bad the hood ornament...
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Even though we had a 60s VW on DOTS just last week , it's been quite a while since our last Beetle . I see 60s and 70s Type 1s all over town, but wasn't putting them up as DOTS cars prior to the Beetle Poll of late August. In any case, this vintage ragtop Beetle is rare enough to have entered this series on its own merits, poll or no poll. 1966 was the last year of the sloping headlight covers for the Beetle, and I've always thought the later headlights didn't look nearly as good. The pre-'68 bumper railings on the older Type 1s looked cool, too. The real problem with these cars was, of course, rust. They even managed to rust in California, though the cause was water leakage from above instead of salt from below. This car, however, is in excellent rust-free condition, which means it's either a restoration or it never leaked. The 1300 was a 1966-only engine for the Beetle, delivering 50 horsepower, zero torque, and wait-for-it throttle response, not to mention valves that went out of adjustment...
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