|
Browse by Tags
All Tags » Alameda » Falcon ( 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. 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going to head over to the former Naval Air Station Alameda, where the Enterprise , Coral Sea , and Carl Vinson have been replaced by companies that make movies and absinthe.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...
|
-
|
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going to head over to the former Naval Air Station Alameda, where the Enterprise , Coral Sea , and Carl Vinson have been replaced by companies that make movies and absinthe.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...
|
-
|
Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. DOTS Truck Monday is with us once again, and today we're going to check out a vehicle that qualifies as both truck and car: a '64 Ford Falcon with truck bed, aka Ranchero! Then, because polls lessen the sting of Simon Legree's workplace lash- which always seems to fall on one's back with particular malice on a Monday- we'll all vote on our favorite street-parked Alameda Ranchero. I found this customized Ranchero parked in front of Mel's Bowl, just after sunset on a Friday. That's right- the owner is rolling on shomer Shabbas! Then there's the additional blasphemy of a Maverick emblem on the tailgate; normally we aren't purists about such things, but Maverick? Still, this Ranchero is in good shape and the custom touches are fairly subdued for the most part. A 289 4-speed Ranchero! Of course, it might actually have...
|
-
|
Since we started off the week with a Falcon cartruck , we might as well take a look at an early Falcon with no truck bed. This '63 usually parks on the same block as the '69 VW Beetle , not far from where a Navy A7 crashed in the early 70s and became a grim Alameda legend. We've seen a couple of Falcons in this series, including a '62 and another '63 (if you consider the Mercury Comet to be a Falcon, then we've also seen this '64 and this '65 ). This one is a beater, no doubt about it, but it's driving every day and holding its head up high at age 45 (while other cars head to The Crusher at age 15 or 20). The slow-motion manner in which rust works around here means that there's not much urgency when the red stuff strikes; if you grind off some paint while doing bodywork, you can always wait until mañana to get some primer on there. Now we're in the dry season, with no rain likely until November or so. In 1963, your base Falcon came with a 144...
|
-
|
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...
|
-
|
I enjoy the nice, shiny, well-preserved cars in this series, of course, but I really love me some beaters! Cars that haven't been coddled for one minute of their decades-long lives! This Cyclone is one of my all-time favorite Alameda cars; an original 289/4-speed machine, it's been roaring around the island for at least the last 15 years and probably longer. It sounds good, looks mean, and lives on a busy street. Sure, it's slowly rusting away, but it's got decades to go before the slow-motion California-style rust finally brings it down. I've talked to the owner of this car a few times (we were neighbors for a couple years in the late 1990s) and he's extremely proud of his wheels. As I recall, he's either the original owner or the second owner, and he has plans to get the body and paint done... someday. There's some rust-through on the hood, but you figure it took 44 years to get this bad... plenty of time to fix the body! The Cyclone name was later applied...
|
-
|
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...
|
-
|
Even though Alameda has plenty of 60s Mustangs, their Falcon siblings are very rare on the island. In fact, we've seen just one Falcon in this series so far. And it's not like the Mustang situation, where I have a huge stash of cars photographed and ready to go- this '62 is the only additional Alameda Falcon I've been able to find (well, unless you count the Falcon-based early-60s Ranchero cartruck I shot a while back). Here is that Falcon, which lives on a busy downtown street and serves as its owner's daily driver. Normally I'd say nonfunctional hood scoops are lame, but the one on the Falcon looks great. Here's where you Edsel aficionados can tell us about how Robert McNamara (who grew up a couple miles away in Oakland and married an Alameda High girl) killed the Edsel in order to push the Falcon... right before he switched to the Vietnam War as his next big project. Did the Falcon lead directly to Khe Sanh? In any case, I recommend The Fog of War to anyone...
|
|
|
|