|
Browse by Tags
All Tags » Alameda » Chevrolet ( RSS)
-
|
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 starting off the new month on a Truck Monday , and we might as well get right back to pickup basics here, with a good ol' Chevy half-ton that lives in the heart of Alameda's downtown. I spent a summer driving one of these when I was in high school, and I liked it quite a bit (once I got used to the three-on-the-tree gearshift). Bouncy, squeaky, and rattly, but not much to go wrong and plenty of style. Back in '63, the base C10 Stepside cost $2,009. That got you the indestructo-grade 230-cubic-inch I6, which would get the truck up to highway speed even with several old refrigerators in the bed… eventually. The '63 Ford F100 Flareside was priced at a near-identical $2,002, but the real truck steal of 1963 was the Dodge D100 Sweptline, which could be had for just $1,823. Here's another multiple-DOTS block; the '69 Skylark...
|
-
|
Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Hooray for old Detroit station wagons! You don't see many small Detroit wagons these days, since the Vista Cruisers and Country Squires sold in such greater numbers back in the pre-SUV era, so I was very happy to spot this bright yellow, Moon disc-equipped Chevy II (or maybe it's a Nova- hard to say with the emblems removed) parked downtown. You could get your little Chevy wagon with a 153-cubic-inch four-cylinder- whoa, a four -cylinder in a 60s Detroit wagon? Call the HUAC! You could also get a 194-cube six-cylinder; sorry, V8 fans, you had to wait until '64 for an optional 283 in your Chevy II. Even though this wagon's owner is clearly a salt-flat-crazed hot rod hoodlum, the single exhaust suggests that he or she has kept the four or six under the hood. Parts runnner? Daily driver? galleryPost('DOTS63NovaWagon', 17, '1963...
|
-
|
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...
|
-
|
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 look at an example of the kind of car that dominated my early gearhead experiences on the island: a beat-to-hell big-block 60s muscle car! There was once a time when primered-out Chevelles, Satellites, Fairlanes, and the like (along with hooned-up Beetles and 510s) could be found lowering property values on just about every block of Alameda… but most of those cars have been hooned into nothingness or restored to gilded-cage, car-show-only condition by now. Just a few survivors, like this '69 Chevelle, remain. First, let's get in the right frame of mind by listening to a song that captures the wholesome appeal of the SS396: Well, maybe this car is a little more menacing than what those Wonder Bread-eating boys had in mind when they wrote that song. I talked to the owner's father, who verifies that it is indeed a...
|
-
|
Even as mega-dealerships keep going under , the older urban car dealerships that had managed to stave off the edge-city auto malls clung to life somehow… but all the personalized customer service and convenient locations in the world couldn't save Good Chevrolet in Alameda, which had operated out of the same downtown location since 1950. Day before yesterday, the axe fell, for Good as well as two other Bay Area Chevrolet dealerships, as gas prices and credit woes administered a cruel bumper-jack beating to new Chevrolet sales. I went by and took some photos of the suddenly-defunct dealership yesterday; make the jump to see them all. galleryPost('GoodChevroletCloses', 9, 'Good Chevrolet Closes Its Doors'); Quite a few DOTS cars were bought new at Good, including this '65 Impala . Über-dealerships located in unincorporated county areas don't have to pay city sales taxes, so the older car dealerships located in urban centers- such as Alameda's Park Street and...
|
-
|
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...
|
-
|
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 take a look at a car that was once everywhere , selling in numbers so vast that Ford and Chrysler execs could only shake their heads in envy. Yes, the early-60s full-sized Chevy… and where are they now? Well, the nice ones are mostly locked away in garages and get trailered to car shows, cruise nights, and lowrider events. The beaters mostly got wrapped around telephone poles or plowed into drainage ditches by generations of small-block-powered hoons, and the rest just sort of rusted to nothingness. Yet in Alameda, a down-but-not-out '63 Bel Air sedan still sees regular driving duty! How many of these things were made? The Standard Catalog figures have a lot of confusing overlaps between all the model variations, but my calculations seem to indicate that an incredible 2,602,830 full-sized 1963 Chevrolets were sold, including...
|
-
|
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's car is a model that you'd expect to find on the island in large numbers, given the sheer quantities sold, but that's not the case. In fact, this is only the fifth Chevy Nova (we've had a '63 , a '70 , a '74 , and a '77 so far) in this series. Why so many more Dodge Darts then Chevy Novas? I think the answer lies partly in the incredible durability of the Slant Six and partly in the simple equation [Nova + Junkyard Small-Block + Cheap Beer = Oblivion] . Yes, when you have a car that takes the engine with the best power-to-money ratio in the world as a bolt-in, you figure there won't be many left in a hoon-friendly area like the East Bay after a few decades. Still, this refrigerator-white '74 (which lives just around the corner from the '69 Volvo P1800 ) has beaten the odds, looking like it just rolled...
|
-
|
Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. There's been just one Corvette so far in this series (also a '73), and I assume so few are on the street for the same reason so few first-generation Camaros are on the street: Car Show Guys! Yes, most old Corvettes now live in garages, emerging only for shows and cruise nights; I'm thinking of shooting a few early C4s for this series, but even those are pretty hard to find parked on the street these days. This car is in pretty nice shape and worth plenty, yet here it is parked on the street in Alameda's West End. I don't see it every day, so I suspect it lives at least part-time in a garage somewhere. It does get used for transportation, much to the envy of all those gilded-cage show/cruise-only Vettes. This is the first Malaise Era Corvette, with power out of the standard 350 down to 190 horsepower. Some of that power loss was...
|
-
|
Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Most of the vehicles we've seen in this series come from the 1960s and 1970s, but Alameda still has a few 1940s machines roaming its streets (including another Chevy truck of the same era as today's). Here's a work truck I've been seeing around town for decades; it's possible that this Chevy has lived on the island since Harry S Truman- or even Franklin D. Roosevelt- was president. I'm just making a quasi-educated guess about the model year, since World War II really made a hash of Detroit vehicle production. The best I can do is narrow it down to the 1941-46 range and hope for Chevy truck experts out there to ID year-specific features… which, of course, may have been swapped with junkyard trucks since the truck was manufactured. This was one of the few American vehicles manufactured for civilian sale in 1944 and 1945, though...
|
-
|
Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Can you believe, with all the first-generation Camaros built, that we're on the 327th Alameda DOTS car and we're seeing our very first one? Are they just too valuable to be allowed on the street? Or did they all go out in blazes of hoonic glory back in the day? If either is true, why do we see so many early Mustangs still on the street? I found this car parked at a meter in front of Jim's Coffee House downtown. Realizing I didn't have time to run home and get my good camera, I decided to make do with the camera in my cellphone . The General made 235,151 Camaros for the '68 model year, compared to Ford's 317,068 Mustangs that year. A V8-equipped Camaro hardtop went for $2,727, versus $2,708 for a V8 Mustang hardtop. With both cars offering roughly similar performance (i.e., terrible handling and braking, decent acceleration...
|
-
|
Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Can you believe, with all the first-generation Camaros built, that we're on the 327th Alameda DOTS car and we're seeing our very first one? Are they just too valuable to be allowed on the street? Or did they all go out in blazes of hoonic glory back in the day? If either is true, why do we see so many early Mustangs still on the street? Note: Yes, I was off by a year on this one, which is what sometimes happens with cars I assume I know well enough to allow me to skip the reference books. Apologies to all you first-gen Camaro fans outraged by my mistake. I found this car parked at a meter in front of Jim's Coffee House downtown. Realizing I didn't have time to run home and get my good camera, I decided to make do with the camera in my cellphone . The General made 230,799 Camaros for the '69 model year, compared to Ford's 299...
|
-
|
Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Strange as it seems, we've only seen one Alameda Monte Carlo so far, and that was a first-year-ever 1970. What about the big Malaise Era Montes, the ones that came close to breaking the two-ton barrier? Welcome to 1977! The 1970 Monte Carlo weighed 3,460 pounds, which was on the porcine side... but compare that to the 1977's 3,852 pounds! Naturally, engine power was one of those best-not-mentioned subjects, with a 170-horse 350 being the best The General could do for you. Yes, that's the '72 Mercury Monterey in the background, though they're not owned by the same person. I spoke to the Monte's owner; he's had the car since it was new and still drives it regularly. Unfortunately, he had the vinyl top redone a while back and the job wasn't done very well. Now the car has an especially bad case of GM Rear Window Rust....
|
-
|
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's car is our fourth Chevy Impala; we've seen a '65 sedan , a '65 Super Sport , and a beautifully wretched '70 prior to today. I'm always reminded of the car driven by Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) in Repo Man when I see a full-size Chevy from this era. The original Alex Cox screenplay (yes, I live by the Repo Code to the extent that I have a copy) was very specific about the make, model, and year of every single vehicle in the movie, and Bud's car was supposed to be a '70. Even with the bent front bumper, this car is way nicer than my 1:25 scale Beater '70 Impala model , but it's got the right number of doors. Actually, it's possible that this car is really a Caprice, since there are no identifying emblems (the Bel Air and Biscayne models didn't come in two-door versions for '70). The interior looks...
|
-
|
In much the same manner as the '73 Mustang and '73 Cougar , the Chevelle for 1973 put on quite a few pounds over its predecessor... just in time for the Arab Oil Embargo . Until now, I hadn't been able to find any of the "big" Malaise Chevelles, though we have seen examples of the angular '64-67 Chevelle as well as the more rounded '68-72 variety. Early emission-control equipment was pretty crude, so compression ratios had to come down, down, down to meet the new federal standards. 1973 was the first year of the Malaise Era (I made up the term, so I get to decide that stuff), and the 350 in this car was rated at either 145 horsepower (two-barrel carburetor) or 175 horsepower (Quadrajet). That hurts, but worse was in store. 3,580 pounds. That's the factory shipping weight of the V8 Chevelle for '73. That means the Chevelle scaled in at 45 pounds more than the weight of the V8-equipped two-door '66 Impala (and about the same as the projected weight...
|
More Posts Next page »
|
|
|