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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 DOTS Truck Monday , let's have an old Ford! I found this '60 parked just across the street from the '70 Dodge Challenger and the '57 Cadillac , and it's one sharp-looking work truck. This truck is clearly a work truck, one of several associated with a Victorian under serious renovation, but it also appears to be in mid-restoration. Let's hope it doesn't stop going to work once it's fixed up. Check out this beautiful dash layout, with its Space Age decorative touches! The column-shift manual! I'm pretty sure this is an F-100, but the body emblems appear to have been removed for the new paint job. galleryPost('DOTS60FordTruck', 16, '1960 Ford Truck Down On The Street'); DOTS FAQ
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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. Big 1960s Fords are always welcome here, and we've seen a couple on the Alameda street prior to today (a '65 Country Squire and a '67 XL ). Now I've spotted another '67, and it's parked right in front of a DOTS favorite: the Hot Dog Stand VW Bus! I spent a lot of my early childhood squabbling with my sisters- no seat belts, never mind child seats- in the back seat of this '67 Ford Custom , which had the extra-cool three-on-the-floor manual transmission, with overdrive . For this reason, I have a real soft spot for these cars, AM radio, terrifying handling and all. It seems likely that the Ketchup Und Mustard Transporter's owner also owns this car; once you've gone smog-check-free, it's hard to buy anything that must take the dreaded dyno test. galleryPost('DOTS67Gal500', 14, '1967 Ford Galaxie 500...
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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 Truck Monday again, and we're overdue for a Ford F series pickup; the last one was nearly three months ago. How about this no-frills F100 I found parked a little ways down from the '62 Falcon ? This thing is just concentrated essence of truck. Oh, sure, the original buyer splurged on the optional chrome side moldings, but we can assume the standard 240-cube inline six engine is present; why pour money down the drain for the 300 six or the 360/390 V8s? Or carpeting, air conditioning, AM radio, or anything else. This country is getting soft , by damn, when pickup trucks are seen as comfy commuter appliances! You should be able to spill a five-gallon bucket of paint in your truck's bed and not care! OK, requisite 2000s truck rant over with. Back in '69, the price tag on this truck, with no options, was $2,393. That was about...
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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. 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...
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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 saw an Alameda Mustang just a couple of days ago, but I'm making the rules here and I say there's no reason we can't have a two-Mustang week! I found this '65 parked on the same block as the '78 Datsun 280Z , the 1986 Toyota Corolla GT-S and the 1960 Cadillac . Alameda has plenty of first-generation Mustangs and I haven't been in any hurry to shoot all of them, but this one really caught my eye with its interesting mix of black-plate originality and no-hurry-to-paint-it primer patches. The vinyl top looks fairly recent, so most likely this car is undergoing one of those very slow restorations and being used as a driver in the meantime. Perhaps it will become a trailer queen once the project is done, but for now it shares the road with Tauruses and Sentras. The GT option package got you a 289 V8, disc brakes (which were still...
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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. So far, we've seen mostly 1960s and 1970s vehicles in this series, but we've seen a couple of 1930s machines (a 1937 Cadillac and a 1939 Chevrolet ). Today we've rolled the clock back to 1932, with a new Oldest Alameda DOTS Champion. That's right, I've managed to find a 76-year-old truck parked on the street! I was walking down Alameda's main downtown street when I saw this very weathered Ford parked in front of Juanita's. I didn't have my good camera with me, but my phone takes pretty decent shots. Hellhammer , who's way more knowledgeable about old Fords than I'll ever be, says this appears to be a '32 Model B truck with the grille from a Model B car. It appears to have the usual rat-rod small-block/automatic drivetrain and untouched vintage patina, and it has the look of a truck that gets used for everyday...
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Dculberson was checking out the car deals on Craigslist when he came across a 1954 Ford that looked familiar… yes, it's the DOTS 1954 Ford we saw almost a year ago, now equipped with grille and Carson top, not to mention a nice 302/5-speed combo. I've always liked this car, but the $9,000 price is a bit out of my personal Hell Project budget range, plus I'm still waiting for the owner to put his other car (which is easily one of my all-time DOTS favorites) up for sale. By the way, I've been seeing FOR SALE signs on the DOTS '71 Buick Le Sabre as well; looks like the tough economy has folks in Sell Mode. [Craigslist SF] galleryPost('DOTS54FordForSale', 3, 'DOTS 1954 Ford For Sale');
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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 tend to think of the Ford Maverick as a pure Malaise Era vehicle, and the two '74s we've seen in this series ( this one and this one) reinforce that impression. Don't forget, though, that the Maverick first hit the showroom floor in pre-Malaise 1969; I've managed to find an early example on the island for today. The Maverick was built on the aging Falcon chassis, with the Falcon nameplate getting moved over to the mid-sized Fairlane line for 1970, where it was used on the cheapo stripper models. The Maverick had the same suspension design- leaf springs and all- that made the early Mustangs handle so badly from the factory. Still, the Maverick was cheap ($1,995 in 1970), simple, and worked just fine as basic transportation. Look at it this way: for just $150 more than the '70 Beetle, you could get a traditional rear-drive/water...
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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 Truck Monday once again, and today I've decided to do something about the shortage of Nixon Era Fords in this series. A couple of sharp-eyed readers noticed this truck in the background of the photos of the Dart GT convertible , so I headed back to photograph it. It says something about Alameda that a solid 38-year-old Ford pickup doesn't even seem all that special at first glance; you see them all over the place here. For the base '70 F250 Custom pickup, you paid $2,780 and got a 150-horse six-cylinder engine. The Camper Special package added big mirrors, heavy-duty alternator and cooling system, and some extra gauges. You could get the 300 six or your choice of V8s in 302-, or 360-, or 390-cubic-inch displacements if you started eyeballing the options list. This truck appears to have the Boxwood Green two-tone paint job; the...
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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. Some are beaters, some are flawless, all are cool. Today, we're going to address the Thunderbird Deficit, with this '65 Thunderbird Landau I found parked just around the corner from the Corvair Van . So, that Thunderbird Deficit I mentioned earlier- it turns out we've seen only one Alameda Thunderbird in this series, and that was a gloriously hideous '61 . Now it's time to look at a nice 60s T-bird. Looks like the interior is in great shape, down to the factory AM radio. Judging from the sticker, it appears that the car's owner is a regular at Alameda's finest tiki bar . Speaking of this car's owner, a simple check of the Radiator Hoes site shows that it's my fellow Alameda East Ender, Swiskee. We've also seen Radiator Hoe Bon Bon 's Dart wagon , as the Hoes have a strong Alameda contingent. galleryPost...
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It's been tough to avoid giving most of our DOTS Truck Monday airtime to General Motors products, since Alameda has more Chevy and GMC trucks than any other variety. We've been especially light on 70s Ford pickups, with just the Frankenstein Mix-N-Match F100 so far, so let's start up our Malaise Era 120-horse V8s and take a look at the kind of truck that would have brought a smile to Billy Carter's face (though Billy preferred a Chevy for his personal ride . I'm sure I could find many more mid-70s F-series trucks on the island, since they hold together pretty well and are still able to earn their keep these days. This truck lives on one of the most DOTS-centric blocks in Alameda. Not only does the '66 Mercedes-Benz 250S we see in the background of this photo live nearby, so do the Double Cab '71 Chevy pickup and 1975 Chevy El Camino . I'm pretty sure the current level of crazy gas prices won't keep this 3/4-ton beast of burden away from the job sites...
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Back when we had the Do Fox Mustangs Belong In DOTS? poll , 63% of Jalopnik readers who bothered to vote said they thought it was a good idea. So, I grabbed the camera and set out on foot to photograph the first pre-90s example I could find. 28 seconds later, here's this abused-but-proud '86 LX showing up in my viewfinder (the same thing happened when I went looking for a Malaise Volvo 240 ). These things are still everywhere on the island (along with their Fairmont, Granada, Mark VII, and other Fox brethren). Sure, I could have held out for a '79, or maybe one with 80s graphics, but beaters are cool! There sure isn't any mistaking the decade of this car! All it lacks is the faded black plastic louvers over the rear window. This car has the Canadian Essex V6 , but it's a non-hellish project to swap in a junkyard 5.0 and take advantage of the light weight of the LX. Lose the faux-wire-wheel hubcaps and chrome fender trim, apply a coat of black primer, and this car would...
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Alameda has plenty of 1964-73 Mustangs on the street. So many, in fact, that I've been taking a sort of "mañana, mañana" attitude about photographing most of them (this also happens with 60s GM pickups and air-cooled Volkswagens). This leads me to wonder why I never see any first-generation Camaros or Firebirds parked on the island's streets; they were made in vast numbers and aren't worth much more than Mustangs now, so what happened to them? Hooned into oblivion? Feel free to weigh in on that burning issue as we take a look at a nice example of the "big" first-generation Mustang. The '73 Mustang convertible, while based on the same chassis as the original 64-1/2 model, weighed in at a hefty 3,198 pounds. That was 584 pounds more than the first Mustang convertible, and matters weren't helped by the Malaise engine selection for '73: the base six groaned out a miserable 88 horses (versus 101 for the '64-1/2 six), while the 302 V8 didn't...
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The Ford Ranchero cartruck went through numerous platform changes over the years, with the full-size sedan-based '57-59s, the compact Falcon-based '60-66s, the mid-sized Fairlane/Torino-based '68-76s, and the bloato-mid-sized LTD-based '77-79s. We saw a beige-and-brown two-tone '79 last summer, and now I've found another two-tone '79 on the island. Those stacked headlights and monstrous turn signal lights are as 1979 as odd-even gas days. Hey, maybe we'll have those again! Even though cartrucks aren't really set up for serious heavy hauling, this Ranchero's bed is spacious enough to really test the limits of that LTD rear suspension. How much gravel can you haul in one load? How many pinball machines? How many street-sign shooting armed drunks and associated cases of Mickey's Big Mouth? Cartruck tradition is firmly behind the "test the load limits" school of thought. You got a 151-horse 351 when you bought a new 1979 Ranchero. Don't...
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