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We've reached yet another milestone in the Down On The Street series- that's right, the 1960 Triumph TR3A was the 350th street-parked Alameda vehicle that we've seen here. Those of you who are new to the series should check out the Down On The Street FAQ before you blow the rest of your work day checking out all 350 machines; that's right, every single one of those little images after the jump is a link to a bunch of car photos. What the heck, it's Friday- you gonna let The Man keep you down? 1932 Ford 1937 Cadillac 1939 Chevrolet 1941 Chevrolet 1942 Pontiac 1943 IHC 1945 Ford 1946 Chevrolet 1947 Plymouth 1948 IHC 1950 Dodge 1950 Ford 1950 Ford 1950 Plymouth 1950 Pontiac 1951 Dodge 1952 Dodge 1953 GMC 1952 Dodge 1953 Packard 1954 Chevrolet 1954 Ford 1955 Mercury 1955 Plymouth 1956 Chevrolet 1956 Imperial 1956 Volkswagen 1956 Morris 1956 Willys 1956 Ford 1957 Volkswagen 1957 Cadillac 1957 Chevrolet 1957 Chrysler 1957 Pontiac 1958 Mercedes-Benz 1959 Porsche 1959 Morris...
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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. 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...
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We're now 14 months into the Down On The Street series, and the total of interesting old vehicles found parked on the streets of Alameda, California, reached the three hundred mark yesterday. Newcomers to this series might want to check out the Down On The Street FAQ before making the jump and viewing the smorgasbord of old iron that thrives outdoors on the Island That Rust Forgot. 1937 Cadillac 1939 Chevrolet 1941 Chevrolet 1942 Pontiac 1943 IHC 1945 Ford 1947 Plymouth 1948 IHC 1950 Dodge 1950 Ford 1950 Ford 1950 Plymouth 1950 Pontiac 1951 Dodge 1952 Dodge 1953 GMC 1953 Packard 1954 Chevrolet 1954 Ford 1955 Mercury 1955 Plymouth 1956 Imperial 1956 Volkswagen 1956 Morris 1956 Willys 1956 Ford 1957 Volkswagen 1957 Cadillac 1957 Chevrolet 1957 Chrysler 1957 Pontiac 1958 Mercedes-Benz 1959 Morris 1959 Volkswagen 1960 Cadillac 1960 Cadillac 1960 Mercury 1960 Studebaker 1960 Chevrolet 1960 Volkswagen 1961 Morris 1961 Rambler 1961 Ford 1961 Plymouth 1962 Chrysler 1962 Chevrolet 1962 Dodge...
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It's not only Truck Monday , it's Memorial Day! We haven't seen a street-parked vintage military vehicle since the Unimog of last fall, and we're due for another war wagon! I spotted this '43 IHC on the same block as the minister's '77 Camaro , and it was apparently surrounded by Soviet troops. Nothing I see on the street in Alameda surprises me any more, so I stopped to see what was going on. It turns out that this truck is owned by the guy who runs the Alameda Naval Air Museum , and all the costumed folks hanging around (including a guy in full Indiana Jones gear and some fur-hatted Rooskies) were getting ready to attend the grand opening of the newly restored Alameda Theater , which had been closed for 30 years and was showing an Indiana Jones premiere. Sure, this International normally lives in a museum, but I caught it parked on the street- it's fair DOTS game! Why Red Army soldiers plan to ride to the movies in a truck done up in USMC colors is a bit...
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We've reached another milestone in the Down On The Street Series, with today's vehicle being the 250th vintage (or at least interesting ) street-parked vehicle I've photographed parked on the streets of Alameda, California. It's been a little over a year since we saw the very first DOTS car , and I never thought I'd be able to find as many as I have. Doing this series has turned me into an annoyingly slow driver when I'm in Alameda, as I'm constantly cruising at minimum speed and scanning parked cars for potential DOTS candidates; by this time I've developed the ability to pick out an interesting parked car just from a nanosecond's glimpse of a grille at a distance of several blocks. So make the jump and check out the cars! Since our server hamsters all die when we try to show more than 200 images in a post you can just go to the 200 DOTS post to see the earlier DOTS cars, I'm just going to show you cars #200 through #250 here. Those of you with questions...
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Here's a truck I'd been seeing around town for months, but was never able to capture holding still long enough to photograph for this series; another such vehicle is a powder-blue BMW 1500 that taunts me on a regular basis. Clearly, the owner of such vehicles drive them every day (very much in the spirit of DOTS) but they park them on obscure streets or- worse yet- in garages. Thwarted! Finally, I spotted the ol' green Chevy truck parked outside a popular dog park in the island's West End. This might be a '42, but the short production run that year (in the month or two prior to GM switching over to vehicles that went "boom" instead of "vroom") means we're probably looking at a '41. You Chevy truck experts who can tell us more, please do so. Either way, this truck is one of the oldest DOTS vehicles yet, either third-oldest or tied for fourth. The really impressive thing is that its owner uses it for everyday transportation; the guy who goes...
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Some of the Down On The Street cars never move (the '82 280ZX is a good example), while others are photographed during a brief moment caught outside of the garage (such as was the case with the 1939 Chevrolet ). But most of them drive regularly, and what better way to prove my point than this blurry cellphone-camera shot of the 1945 Ford GPW Jeep parked in front of the island's Trader Joe's store? And if you look really, really hard, you can just barely make out the snout of a silver Peugeot 505 in the background.
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var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/autos/200_classic_cars_found_on_the_streets_of_Alameda_CA'; I'm no longer going to express any shock that my island city continues to provide a seemingly inexhaustible supply of street-parked vintage cars and trucks; we got to 150 Down On The Street posts late last year, we're up to 200 as of today, and I've got enough photos in the can to get us to 250, no sweat. For those of you who are new to the DOTS phenomenon, I'm going to repeat the answers I put together the last time around for the Most Commonly Asked DOTS Questions: Q: Did you really find all these cars parked on the streets of Alameda? A: Yes, every one of them. Sometimes we'll post photos of street-parked old/cool cars from other places, but they get the Down On The Street Bonus Edition title. Q: Why don't you obscure the license plates in the photos? A: These cars are parked on public property, with plates in plain view, which implies that their owners accept that...
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There must be a long and complicated story behind this car, which I've seen around town for many years, but all I know for sure is that its owner once owned a 40s-memorabilia shop downtown and still drives the car regularly. You don't see many 1942 model American cars, since those pre-Starion Mitsubishis and their Pearl Harbor drive-by caused what few '42s were manufactured to be drafted for military service. This '42 sports full military regalia and lives full-time on the street in Alameda's East End. It's got the sirens, blackout lights, and other goodies the well-equipped Pontiac-driving Army officer needed back in the day. It's good to get another 40s vehicle in this series; this is the fourth (after the '45 Jeep , '47 Plymouth , and '49 International Harvester ). This Chief Pontiac hood ornament isn't quite as cool as the one on the 1950 Pontiac Chieftan , but it's still one of my favorites. Check out the vintage radiotelephone in there...
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The real problem with doing DOTS Truck Monday is that International Harvester trucks are too hard to find. We saw the '80 Scout last month, and there's another Scout on deck, but where are the IHC pickup trucks? That's why I was overjoyed to spot this 60-year-old work truck parked in front of a Gold Coast mansion that was getting some concrete work done. Yes, contractors in Alameda drive trucks handed down to them by their grandpappies! This could be a '47, '48, or '49 model truck, those being the years of the KB-2; I'm arbitrarily choosing 1948. The KB-2 came with an 82-horse flathead six, no doubt the same engine installed in their Farmall tractors. You could haul equipment around the farm all day and then take the KB-2 into town for some honky-tonkin' good times. But... where's the cup holder? A cement mixer and a gas can in the bed. The cumulative cargo hauled by this truck in its lifetime would probably sink a container ship! galleryPost('DOTS48IHC'...
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When I started the Down On The Street series, I'd shot a handful of cars and figured I'd be able to do a few dozen more before running out. Sure, I knew the island city of Alameda, California, had plenty of old cars parked on the street, but with a population of just 70,000 on a mere ten square miles of land, how many could there be? Well, it turns out the answer is: Plenty! Not only have we reached car number 150, I have sufficient photos stockpiled to keep the series going for quite a while. And now I'll answer some of the questions I keep getting from readers about Down On The Street: Q: Did you really find all these cars parked on the streets of Alameda? A: Yes, every one of them. Sometimes we'll post photos of street-parked old/cool cars from other places, but they get the Down On The Street Bonus Edition title. Q: Why don't you obscure the license plates in the photos? A: These cars are parked on public property, with plates in plain view, which implies that their...
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1950 Dodge Pickup After ogling the chromium curvature of the '53 Nash ornament (currently installed on a '57 Studebaker) in yesterday's Emblem and Hood Ornament Pr0n gallery, it occurred to me that Alameda has plenty of nice hood ornaments that you can see without going to a once-a-year car show downtown. You can see them parked Down On The Street , in fact. So, I've taken some of the nicer hood ornaments from past DOTS entries and put 'em together for your voting pleasure. 1953 Packard Cavalier 1976 Plymouth Volare 1957 Chevrolet Wagon 1950 Pontiac Chieftan 1975 Pontiac Grand LeMans 1959 Morris Minor 1947 Plymouth 1955 Plymouth Savoy 1972 Mercury Monterey Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.
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A milestone has been reached: today's Down On The Street car is the 100th street-parked Alameda car we've seen in this series! When I started shooting cars for DOTS, I knew Alameda had quite a few interesting old vehicles to be found, but I had no idea there would be so many... and I have plenty I haven't posted yet. So, in honor of #100, here's a list of links to the first 100 DOTS cars, arranged by model year. Note: In the handful of cases where we couldn't pin down an exact year, I just took my best guess within the probable range of years. 1937 Cadillac V8 1939 Chevrolet Master Deluxe Coupe 1945 Ford GPW Jeep 1950 Dodge Pickup 1950 Plymouth DeLuxe 1950 Pontiac Chieftan 1951 Dodge M43 Ambulance 1952 Dodge 1953 Packard Cavalier 1954 Ford Mainline 1955 Plymouth Savoy 1956 Willys Jeep Station Wagon 1957 Chevrolet Station Wagon 1957 Chrysler New Yorker 1957 Pontiac Star Chief 1957 Volkswagen Transporter 1959 Morris Minor 1960 Cadillac Sixty-Two Coupe 1960 Chevrolet Bel Air 1961 Morris 850...
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