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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. Since it's Maximum Minivan Day , I knew I had to prowl the streets of Alameda and find a first-generation Chrysler minivan for this series. Easy, right? It turned out to be the hardest DOTS search I've ever done, because I've tuned out minivans from my personal Cool Vehicle Detectors the way treasure hunters adjust their metal detectors to tune out bottlecaps; I just don't see them. Not that I'm anti-minivan, mind you- if every SUV owner whose lifestyle would be better served by a minivan… well, no need to go there, eh? Anyway, I figured I needed to find a Mopar minivan with some character , and that means we're looking at an example of the very last year of the first-gen Dodge Caravan today. You think an 18-year-old minivan doesn't qualify for this series? Sure, I could have shot any number of mid-80s examples, but come...
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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's car is one I'm quite familiar with, since it's now sitting in my back yard. No, it isn't my current Personal Hell Project; I'm helping Czech automotive journalist Bobash realize his dream of terrorizing quaint Central European villages with an ocean-liner-scale Fuselage Look Mopar. You may recall the '81 Corvette I inspected for BobAsh a while back; that car is now roaring around the Czech Republic in all its Late Malaise glory. This car was a one-owner, estate-sale find. The late owner was a San Francisco chiropractor who garaged it, had it serviced on the dot, and (apparently) never allowed anyone to sit inside. It's got a few minor dings and dents, but almost everything works and the (purple whorehouse-esque) interior is the nicest I've ever seen on an unrestored 90,000-mile car. It's not what you would...
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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. I've been thinking about the Imperial quite a bit lately, since there's a very clean hardtop '71 Imperial Le Baron now sitting in my driveway. We'll get the story on that car a little later, but for today I've got some photographs of a vast, angular '64 Imperial Crown four-door hardtop that I found parked right around the corner from the 1942 Pontiac Torpedo . First of all, when we're talking about an Imperial, we need to reiterate this important Imperial fact, lest we enrage the purists: this is not a Chrysler Imperial; Imperial was its own marque during the 1955-75 period, so referring to such a car as a "Chrysler Imperial" is like calling an Eldorado a "General Motors Cadillac." No wonder these things were outlawed at most demolition derbies! Everything seems to be cast out of great slabs of solid...
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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 "fuselage" early-70s Chrysler is pretty well represented in this series, with this '71 Newport and this '71 Newport Royal , but seeing yesterday's '70 Newport Royal ad made me decide to break out the photos of today's vast two-door luxury machine. The 1970-71 Chrysler C-body is actually one of my favorite Detroit body styles of all time (with the 1970 Chrysler 300 Hurst being the ultimate ), and I've often considered leaving a "How much do you want?" note on today's DOTS car. How many acres is that hood? The standard engine for the '70 Newport was a 383 with 290 horsepower, but the Chrysler dealer could get you a 350-horse 440. Get the 300 Hurst and you got 370 horsepower from your 440. Sadly, a 4-speed manual transmission was not available from the factory. There's the usual rust you see...
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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 had to happen, sooner or later; somewhere on the island, a Cordoba was waiting- soft Corinthian leather and all- for my camera. Now that day has arrived, with this '78 located in the 1950s-vintage part of the island landfilled into the Bay. Generally, houses in such neighborhoods have garages, which means the DOTS pickings are much slimmer than those in the neighborhoods full of houses built during the 1880-1910 period, but this Chrysler still lives outside after 30 years. First, we must watch the Ricardo Montalban ad that started it all. In Cordoba, I have what I need! Plastic "gold" Cordoba medallions may be found all over this fine personal luxury automobile. Weighing in at a portly 4,021 pounds and motivated by a thirsty 318 or 360, the Cordoba wasn't quite the ideal machine for a time of fuel-price insecurity. By '78...
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Cadillacs aplenty in this series, and a few Lincolns, but how about Chrysler's top-of-the-line marque? I'd been seeing this '56 Imperial around town for years, but only recently was I able to capture it holding still for the camera in a downtown parking space. I'm pretty sure it lives on the island, but it's either hiding on a side street I haven't checked or sleeps in a garage. This 52-year-old is in incredible original condition- not a flawless show car, but as close as you're going to see in a car this old that sees regular street use. Most folks call these cars Chrysler Imperials, but Imperial was a separate brand during the 1950s. Things got more muddled later on when the name was resurrected in the early 1980s, but in 1956 you had two choices: Imperial or Crown Imperial. Here's the only shot I was able to get of this car for quite a while. The '56 Imperial came with a "poly" 354 engine; not a Hemi, but still quite powerful with 280 horses...
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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...
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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...
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We love our Chrysler A-bodies around here, no doubt about that. For that reason, I'm overjoyed to have finally found one of the later A-body-based Barracudas in Alameda. Cool as the 'fastback Valiant' early Barracudas were, the 1966-69 cars were the ones that really looked like their sleek carnivorous namesake (the E-body Chryslers- those that avoided being hooned to death back in the day, that is- are probably worth too much to the nostalgio-freak crowd to be seen parked on the streets of Alameda, but I'm still hoping to find one). A high-school friend of mine had a gold '67 like this one, equipped with lumpy-cammed 340 and 4-speed, and it probably took 15 years before his car's burnout marks finally disappeared from the stretch of Encinal Avenue in front of the school. My friend was also an ardent supporter of the Alameda High tradition of Open Header Fridays (eventually crushed by do-gooder teachers and motorcycle cops with strong ticket-writing hands, the tradition...
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Is it really possible that it's been two months since our last Mopar A-body in this series? Like air-cooled VWs, Chrysler A-bodies are so plentiful in Alameda that I tend to lose track of when the last time I DOTS-ized one (also like air-cooled VWs, I've owned a few Slant Six A-bodies and feel much affection for them). So here comes a nice solid 4-door Dart, which lives on the same block as the Mercedes-Benz 280SEL that came in second in yesterdays DOTS Benz poll . The Dart is one of the few vintage Detroit cars in which I prefer the six-cylinder engine to the V8, but then the Slant Six makes even the 318 seem flaky. Of course, a 340/4-speed Dart might convince me to give up the Leaning Tower of Power. This Dart gets driven every day, and there's no telling how many times its 5-digit odometer has been turned over. Check out those Buick hubcaps, which actually look pretty good on a Dodge. This car parks in front of a house in which a high-school girlfriend lived back in the day...
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I had a vague recollection of having posted a '64 big Chrysler in this series, but it turned out to be a DOTS Oakland Edition '64 Newport . So let's cross the Estuary from Oakland back to Alameda and scrutinize an oxidized-but-highly-original '64 Chrysler 300 today. This four-door hardtop, which lives in the vicinity of the '72 Capri , has survived many, many miles and yet still serves as everyday transportation. The standard engine in the '64 300 was a 305-horse 383 V8 . Of course, by this time the car might have had a 440 or 413 swap- you just never know with mix-n-match-friendly 60s Detroit cars. No focus group would ever permit an automaker to have such a grille as this today; focus groups want bigger cupholders and a higher driver's seat, not vivid styling. I like the "textured" paint, but those wheelwells deserved to be filled up by bigger tires. galleryPost('DOTS64Chrysler300', 15, '1964 Chrysler 300 Down On The Street'); First...
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You know I was reaching for the camera in a hurry when this car loomed into my field of vision. This Plymouth is owned by the guy who has the Creamsicle '54 Ford we saw a while back, and I can say from firsthand experience that the copper paint job looks perfect when illuminated by streetlights after dark. The perfect mix of classic Detroit and postmodern irony. Something like that. Anyway, it looks very, very good, and it has suicide doors to boot! This sailing-ship hood ornament- which I sure hope lights up- definitely contends with the 1950 Pontiac for our Best DOTS Hood Ornament Award. Hmmm... there's a poll idea... It's got the visor, the low stance, the removal of some (though not all) of the trim. Is this Plymouth a rat rod? Not that I care about such labels, but it's a subject we've debated before without coming to a consensus. The owner wasn't around when I shot these photos, but his wife stuck her head out the kitchen window and told me to go ahead and open the doors if I wanted...
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When we saw the '73 Plymouth Scamp last week, I promised we'd try to put a dent in the unfortunate deficit of Chrysler A-bodies in this series. So, reaching into my stash of DOTS photos (I ain't sayin' how many I have, but you can count on seeing an Alameda street survivor each day for quite a while), I'm presenting this proud '64 Dart 270. Sometimes it seems that the 1964 -66 Mopar A-bodies get overlooked, being overshadowed by the wonderfully nutjob toilet-seat-on-the-trunklid styling of the early 60s Darts and Valiants and the angular look of the ones that followed. Still, they weren't exactly wallflowers. The 270 was the mid-priced Dart for '64, placed between the cheapskate 170 and the upscale GT. Standard engine was the 170-cube Slant Six, and you really couldn't go wrong with that engine choice; generally the engine was the last thing to die on these cars. Of course, some opted for the 225 six or the damn-near-as-reliable 273 V8; yes, you could get one with a 4-speed! Those headlights...
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Looking at the Alameda cars I've already photographed, I realize that I have shots of six Chrysler A-bodies stored up. This wouldn't be a big deal, but I've only shown a single A-body so far in the series (no, the '77 Volaré was not an A-body ). I feel...
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