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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 looking for a DOTS-worthy Subaru for a long time, but it seems that most of the 70s and 80s examples were crushed long ago. While I'd prefer a BRAT, we'll have to settle for this Justy. First, let's listen to the song I always hear in my head when contemplating a tiny Subaru from the days before mall parking lots were full of the things. Dr. Demento was a big fan of this tune, of course: I've driven a couple of these cars, and "underpowered" doesn't really do that 66-horsepower 3-cylinder justice. In fact, the only post-WW2 vehicle I've ever driven that was slower than the Justy was the VW Rabbit Diesel my high school used for driver training class. But so what? This thing can probably cross several counties on a shotglass of fuel, and it proves that you don't need a Sprint for 3-cylinder 80s action...
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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's Porsche Day today, and we're getting our very first 924. So far we've seen one 356 , a few 912s , a bunch of 911s , some 914s , a couple of 928s , and a pair of 944s (plus a faux Speedster ), so it's about damn time I found one of these. They were still making the 924 in 1988? Yes, the 944 hadn't totally pushed its cheaper sibling aside as the 1980s drew to a close, though 1988 was the very last year for the 924. By this time, the old Audi engine was gone, replaced by the 944's Porsche-made engine (the 944S had a more powerful version of the engine). Still, the '88 924S was a pretty good deal; at $19,900, it was $5,600 cheaper than the base 944, yet had the same 147 horses under the hood. This example seems fairly solid, though there's no telling how far it is from the dreaded timing belt replacement that keeps...
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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 neglecting the big BMWs for most of this series, so it's time to follow up the the '86 735i with another E23 from the cocaine-and-S&L-money-mad mid-1980s. Remember the Savings And Loan Crisis? Wild West loans on worthless assets and egregious fraud following in the wake of deregulation of a once-staid sector of the financial system, ultimately costing 160 billion bucks in taxpayer money? Wait, that sounds familiar, except for the bargain price tag… anyway, here's the kind of car that a low-level S&L scamster would have bought with the proceeds of his first "dead horses for dead cows" loan. Now that I'm looking for these cars (and don't worry, 5 Series fans, I'll get some of your cars too), I'm seeing them all over the island. This '84 has seen shinier days, but it still gets its owner...
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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 BMW E24 is not exactly an endangered species, but it's such a good-looking car that every single one I see in Alameda qualifies for this series. Never mind that I have photographs of six Alameda 2002s stockpiled- it's 6 Series time again! This car is owned by the man I consider to be the King Of Alameda BMWs; not only does he have a '74 E9 on the street, he's got a turbocharged 745i and who knows what other droolworthy Bavarian steel in the garage and scattered around the neighborhood. We'll be seeing the rest of his cars soon enough, but today it's the E24's turn. He picked up this '82 633CSi cheap when its previous owner despaired of ever getting his PCH running. It needs some work, but the body is straight and it now runs just fine. It's tough to find an example of car-quality-per-dollar quite as good as...
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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. There's been no shortage of BMWs in this series, but I've sort of overlooked the 5 and 7 series cars so far. No more! Today we'll look at one of the last of the E23s , a somewhat scuffed but still proud 735i, located in the post-late-50s landfill part of town, not far from the '66 Dodge A100 Sportsman . Driving one of these things back in the 80s showed that you were serious . At $36,880 list (well over 75 grand- and climbing- in today's inflato-dollars), you could have bought nine brand-new Yugos and had enough left over for a couple of pretty clean used Datsun B210s. Tough decision! Nowadays, these cars have depreciated down to about 2-3% of their original purchase price. Pretty good bang-for-buck, in terms of how much German engineering and sophistication you get for your money: a 182-horsepower six-cylinder engine, big brakes...
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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. When we saw the Mitsubishi L300 - which is a seriously rare machine in the United States, though I've just found another one in Alameda- some readers felt that the Toyota Van deserved a place in this series as well. You can find those things all over the place, so I decided I'd wait until I found an interesting one… and now I've found two! Alameda's waterfront on the Oakland Estuary side has all manner of marine-related businesses, from dredging companies to marine engine rebuilders to sailmakers. Sea Worthy Canvas- located across the street from a Toyota parts warehouse (and just down the street from the '64 Olds Jetstar )- uses a pair of Toyota Vans to deliver the goods to salty sea dogs throughout the Bay Area. Actually, it looks like they're using them for sail storage at the moment. These mid-engined vans sold like crazy...
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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. We've seen our share of Porsches in this series, mostly 911s and 912s but with a handful of water-cooled jobs thrown in. So far I've been unable to find any 924s, but today we'll add another 9 4 4 to the lone '87 we've already got. I found this '85 parked on the same block as the '80 Volvo 244 and just around the corner from the silver '67 Porsche 912 . It's plenty rough, with sun-bleached paint and lots of dents, and it never seems to move from this spot. Did the dreaded $1,000 timing belt let go? Is it unable to pass the smog test? The tags expire on Halloween, so action will need to be taken soon. This was the most affordable Porsche you could get in 1985, its $21,440 price tag less than half the size of the 928's and ten grand lower than the cheapest 911. That still wasn't cheap; you could have bought...
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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 we're going to check out a car that proves what a small world this really is; I was over at the parents' place the other day- yeah, I'm still on speaking terms with them in spite of having been given a girl's name, since it's that name that's given me the gravel in my gut and the spit in my eye- and my mom asked, "Have you seen that race car parked down the street?" Race car? Sure enough, parked about five doors down from my childhood home, here's the El Moto Loco VW Golf from the 24 Hours Of LeMons SF race in May. One day you're scraping fenders with a car on the race track, and a few months later it's lowering the property values in your parents' neighborhood! These guys had some great Lucha Libre costumes, and they'd probably have made a run at People's Choice if it hadn't been...
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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. The Jaguar XJ6 sold in fairly large numbers in North America during the 70s and 80s, but you don't see many of them on the street these days. Perhaps that's because brutish, ham-fisted Americans (and those Moosehead-swilling, tuque-wearing Canadians) can't be trusted with such precision British machinery… or maybe all those British car jokes really do draw from a well of all-too-painful reality. Either way, a few of these cars are still alive in Alameda; we've seen this total beater '78 and this semi-nice '84 , and now we're going to look at this somewhat rough '86. It's always fun with DOTS cars park near each other; that's the '62 Ford Falcon across the street. I see the Falcon driving around town on a regular basis, but the Jaguar doesn't seem to move much… if at all. The list price on this cat in...
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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. Though we've seen many of Alameda's first-generation Mustangs (a '65 , a '66 , another '66 , a '68 , a '69 , and a '73 ) and even a Mustang II , the Fox Mustang hasn't been well represented here. In fact, we've only had this beater '86 … until now. Yes, parked just a block or so from the '89 Ferrari Mondial T , here's a very nice example of the rare Mustang SVO . In '86, the SVO came with a 200-horsepower 2.3 liter "Pinto" four-banger, essentially the intercooled version of the engine used in the Merkur XR4Ti. Speaking of the XR4Ti , check out that wing! Even though the turbo 2.3 made the same horsepower as the 5.0 V8 and the SVO came with all manner of cool brake and suspension goodies, sales were miserable. Why? Price tag on the V8 Mustang GT for '86: $10,691. Price of the '86...
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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 we're going to look at one of the many reasons that Cadillac has had to struggle so mightily to build a coherent brand image- ideally, one that attracts buyers who might otherwise buy European machinery- in the Post Malaise Era: the 1984 Eldorado Biarritz. These cars weren't built for the long haul, but The General built them in sufficient numbers that you still see one now and then. This example parks near the high school, just down the street from the '69 Lincoln and the '76 Buick Donk ; while it rarely leaves its parking place, the current registration tags indicate that it has moved under its own power in the not-too-distant past. In '84, the base engine in the Eldorado was the 135-horse 4.1 liter V8, which was good enough to haul the car's 3,748 pounds. The disastrous Oldsmobile 350 diesel engine was also available...
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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 VW van is a fairly common sight in Alameda, so much so that I keep passing by most T2 Transporters without stopping to photograph them (we've seen numerous T1 buses: 1956 , 1957 , 1960 , 1966 , and 1967 ). I'd been contemplating the inclusion of an early water-cooled Volkswagen van in this series- but still wasn't convinced they belonged - when I spotted this super-clean '87 Vanagon Syncro parked just across the street from the 1957 Cadillac . I'm convinced now; it's Vanagon Monday today! The four-wheel-drive Syncro didn't sell at all well in North America, no doubt because Detroit and Japan were filling showrooms with burly off-road hardware that made the VW look like something only Yurp-lovin' effete snobs (not to mention nattering nabobs of negativism) would choose to drive. South Africans loved the Syncro so...
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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. We've only seen one Mercedes-Benz R107 so far, though they were made from 1972 through 1989 . I see them around town, but they've just always seemed so timeless that I tend not to notice them while I'm out looking for cars to shoot. Today we're going to look at a Late Reagan Era R107, one of the very last of the series. How much did this car cost new? $55,300, or 107 grand in today's dollars. That's $3,600 less than a Porsche 928. The Porsche gave you 316 horsepower versus 238 for the Benz, but which one would most impress your co-conspirators at a collapsing S&L? Exactly . This one's not in what you'd call pristine shape, but it looks pretty good and gets driven. I know of a pretty solid W113 not far from this car, so we'll be seeing a pagoda roof pretty soon. galleryPost('DOTS87560SL', 15, '1987...
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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. We've had a real Mazda shortage around these parts, probably because the early rotaries tended to blow out the apex seals and/or suck gas and thus didn't weather the decades quite as well as their piston-engine competition. There's been an '81 RX-7 (plus one non-Wankel '82 Mazda ) and that's been it until today. I've decided to go deeper into the 80s to enable more RX-7s to qualify for this series, because they were great cars on the street (and on the racetrack ) and deserve our respect. Sure, it was a nightmare to make the Wankel pass America's ever-toughening smog standards (and let's not even mention the complexity of the later RX-7 Turbo's emissions gear), but the power-to-weight of that little engine was nuts . The '85 GSL weighed a mere 2,345 pounds and went pretty well with 101 horses. However, the...
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