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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. BMW 2002s aren't hard to find on the island, and we've seen this '72 , this '73 , and this '75 so far. I've built up a mini-stockpile of 2002 shots, so let's check out another '75 Bavario-Alamedan today. This one's rough, but it's more "fixer-upper" rough than "downward spiral" rough, if I'm guessing correctly. It doesn't seem to drive much, but it has the look of a car with some spare parts waiting for it in the garage… and someday they'll be installed! 1975 is the newest a California non-diesel vehicle can be and still be exempted from the dreaded emissions test. That means that you can do something to upgrade the horsepower on this car from the factory 98 to a number with three digits, all the while staying legal. With all those junkyard 3-series engines available for next...
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With just one Malaise Nova up until now in this series , it's time to set our thermostats at 66 in winter/78 in summer, lower our expectations of future prosperity, and travel back to the Bicentennial Era... when presidents got impeached, wars got lost, and the base V8 in a new Chevy Nova was a 155-horse 350. Actually, the Nova of this era wasn't a bad car; it was cheap and every component was made by the lowest possible bidder, but it was honestly cheap. The Nova Custom was the mid-level trim package; you could get get the '75 Custom sedan for $3,415, and for another 75 bucks you'd have one with that lo-po 350 I mentioned earlier. Of course, since 1975 and older cars are smog-exempt in California, there's nothing stopping the owner of this car from adding, say, 300 additional horsepower using cheap off-the-shelf performance parts. I'm often tempted to go the Nova + small-block route for my next project car, though I'd probably use one of the Buick/Olds/Pontiac...
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After finding a pair of '77 Celicas parked on the streets of Alameda ( this one and this one ), I had a first-gen Celica drought that lasted the better part of a year. Had all the rest been crushed? Then I started catching glimpses of this red '75 around town, and I knew it was just a matter of time before I found it parked somewhere. Since photographing this car downtown, I've found where it parks when off duty. Yes, it's a 33-year-old daily-driven Toyota. Who needs power door locks and cup holders? According to the original California smog sticker, this Celica has the indestructible 20R engine . Only 90 horses, but they'd keep galloping for hundreds of thousands of miles. 2,270 pounds. That's 23 pounds less than the tiny '09 Yaris... and the Celica has rear wheel drive! Which one would you take? Airbags or character? galleryPost('DOTS75Celica', 20, '1975 Toyota Celica Down On The Street'); DOTS 1-200 • DOTS 201-250
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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 '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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Even though Alameda is home to numerous street-parked Chevy El Caminos, I've been guilty of overlooking examples of GM's truckcars so far in this series, with just this '72 so far. That's probably because I consider the 1959-60 and 1964-67 models to be the only "true" El Caminos, for reasons that don't stand up under any serious scrutiny. So, with Maximum El Camino Day as inspiration, I'm going to make sure that we see more of the island's Elcos in the future, starting today! galleryPost('DOTS75ElCamino', 6, '1975 Chevy El Camino Down On The Street'); While non-pickup Chevelles of this era are a rare sight, you still see quite a few El Caminos. No doubt this is due to the usefulness of the truck bed motivating owners to keep the things running long after the non-bed-equipped A-bodies were crushed. This '75, a fine example of the Malaise Era GM A-body, lives on the same block as the Bonus Cab '71 Chevrolet pickup ; I think they...
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So we had our Favorite Detroit Malaise Car poll last week, from which the '78 Cadillac Eldorado emerged triumphant (the combo of a 500 cubic-inch engine and T-tops proved unbeatable). But what about Malaisemobiles from across the waters? This poll includes the rebadged imports sold by Detroit as part of their "if you can't beat 'em, put your name on 'em" strategy of the era, in addition to straight-out imports. Jump like a UH-1 leaving the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon to see the contestants! Note: Since we've got two apiece '74 Porsche 911s and '77 Toyota Celicas, I'm choosing one apiece (yes, we have two '78 Colts, but one is a sedan and the other is a wagon). Now on with the Malaise! 1973 BMW 3.0CSi 1973 Capri 1973 Datsun 610 1973 Ford Courier 1973 Volkswagen Thing 1973 Volkswagen Squareback 1974 Porsche 911 Targa 1975 Datsun B210 1976 Honda Civic 1977 Toyota Celica 1978 Dodge Colt 1978 Dodge Colt Wagon 1978 Honda Civic 1978 Jaguar XJ...
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With the Malaisetastic '80 Plymouth Fire Arrow that we saw yesterday on my mind, I got to thinking about the meaning of the Malaise Era, specifically about the American-built vehicles sold during that period. Not captive imports like the Fire Arrow or quasi-domestics like the Capri, but real Detroit (or Kenosha) machinery. And, yes, I know that Jimmy Carter never actually uttered the word "Malaise" in his so-called Crisis of Confidence speech in 1979; what started as a joke term for the cars of the 1973-1983 period has now hardwired itself into my brain). Then I realized that I've forgotten the quasi-tradition of having a Friday poll for the readers to vote on their favorite DOTS machine of the week, so I owe you some DOTS poll action. That means it's time to jump like the late-70s inflation rate to pick your favorite of Alameda's Malaisewagons! Looking at these cars, I realize that I've been remiss in not photographing early-80s Detroit iron on Alameda's...
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Once again, I must rail against the sad fact that just about all the Malaise Era Japanese cars have been crushed by now, victims of their own utilitarian reliability and perceived lack of soul. Now that most of what we see from the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere are scientifically de-soul-ified transportation appliances, we realize too late what we lost when the genuinely quirky Japanese machinery got melted down to make... Avalons. We saw a '76 Civic here not long ago, but it's been two long months since we saw a Datsun down on Alameda 's streets. Known as the Sunny in The Sphere and the 120Y in Europe, we North Americans knew this car as the B210 . While the gas mileage claims for the B210 may have been on the ludicrous side, the car was cheap and (for its era) quite dependable. Look at it this way: You need to drive across the country with no tools. B210 or Chevette? I'd been seeing this car driving around town for a while, but I could never figure out where it lived. Most of...
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