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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 haven't seen a Peugeot in this series since the '60 403 in July, and before that there was only the '85 505 . I'm still hoping that a 504- the only kind of French car I've ever had the privilege (if that's the right word) to own myself- will show up, but for now the next best best thing is this 1991 Peugeot 405 S. Now, 1991 is pretty recent for DOTS, but keep in mind that this was the very last year for new Peugeot sales in the United States, which makes this car an important piece of American automotive history. This car parks in front of the same house that was once home to the '85 Peugeot 505 , and it's visible in the background of the shots of that car. However, that 505 sedan is now gone… replaced by a 505 wagon. Don't worry, Peugeot fans, we'll check out that car later on. Only 2,223 Peugeots were sold...
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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. BMW 2002s aren't hard to find on the island, and we've seen this '72 , this '73 , and this '75 so far. I've built up a mini-stockpile of 2002 shots, so let's check out another '75 Bavario-Alamedan today. This one's rough, but it's more "fixer-upper" rough than "downward spiral" rough, if I'm guessing correctly. It doesn't seem to drive much, but it has the look of a car with some spare parts waiting for it in the garage… and someday they'll be installed! 1975 is the newest a California non-diesel vehicle can be and still be exempted from the dreaded emissions test. That means that you can do something to upgrade the horsepower on this car from the factory 98 to a number with three digits, all the while staying legal. With all those junkyard 3-series engines available for next...
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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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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 30-year-old Detroit car that's an honest-to-god daily driver and parks in the heart of Alameda's downtown. It's got its share of bumps and bruises, but it's managed to survive the hoonage that has killed off most of its second-gen F-body brethren by now. It's also managed to survive the owner's temptation to build a phony Burt Reynolds-esque Trans Am clone, and for that we should be thankful! It's not a Sky Bird Esprit , just a plain ol' Firebird. In '78, the price tag on one of these with a Buick V6 was $4,545, which $1,254 less than the Trans Am's price. That's quite a bit of money for a few acres of decals and- we're not kidding here- just 75 additional horsepower over the V6. I've always liked these Pontiac rally wheels, because they look very similar to 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. The island has several old Suburbans still racking up the miles; we've seen this '63 GMC Carryall and today we'll be looking at an equally weathered '65 Chevy. This truck parks about a half-block from the '65 Thunderbird and just around the corner from the '87 Mercedes-Benz 560SL , with at least a dozen Alameda DOTS cars living within a couple blocks. Sometimes you need to do a little Field Expedient Engineering to keep your doors shut, once you've turned over the odometer a few times. This truck has plenty of harmless surface rust, with every indication being that it's still about as solid as it was when LBJ was president (though the interior was a lot nicer back then). Why did this truck's original buyer decide to go with The General's two-door rather than International Harvester's four-door , in spite...
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First of all, the DOTS Triumph TR3A we saw yesterday is a '59- at least, many of its parts are from that year- not a '60 as I guessed calculated. But that doesn't matter, because it turns out that the owner is a Jalopnik reader and he's just brought the car to Alameda from Pennsylvania in a wild-eyed, road-food-scarfing, .357-brandishing, 10-day journey. Yes, this road trip manages to counter a lot of stereotypes we might be harboring of breakdown-prone British cars driven by tedious old guys in tweed caps. Did he take photographs for us to enjoy? Did the Stag's V8 suck? Of course he did; follow Vin's adventures in this Flickr set! galleryPost('TR3ARoadTrip', 6, '1959 Triumph TR3A Drives Across America');
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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. Dodge Darts are very common on the Alameda street; we've seen a '64 coupe, a '64 wagon , a '69 convertible , another '69 convertible , a '70 sedan , and a '75 Swinger so far, and that's not even counting the Valiant siblings. By comparison, Falcons and Novas are quite rare. Clearly, that Slant Six is an engine to be reckoned with! I found this car parked between the '69 Olds Cutlass convertible and the '56 Morris (all three cars are owned by the same person), and right across the street from the '54 Ford and '47 Plymouth . Yes, it's that kind of block. Two doors, vinyl top, original black plates- great to see this car still going strong. While it most likely has a Slant Six, it was possible to buy this car new with a 383 or 440 big-block and experience the joys of zero header clearance. galleryPost...
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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 been a while since we've had a British sports car in this series (I believe the last one was this '71 MGB-GT ), so let's celebrate this year's final stretch of open-air motoring weather with this nice Triumph I found parked in one of Alameda's wealthiest neighborhoods. As for this car's model year, I've chosen 1960 pretty much totally arbitrarily; the TR3A was made from 1957 through 1962. This might not even be a TR3A, since Triumph put the TR4 engine/transmission in the TR3A and called it the TR4B in 1962. If you're a Triumph expert and you're reading this, take a break from grappling with The Prince Of Darkness and let us know how we might identify the year of this car from the photographs below. If this car is a TR3A with the original engine, then we're looking at a 2,016-pound car with 100 horsepower;...
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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're going to look at our fifth Alameda Lincoln today; of the first five, the suicide-door primered '69 was the crowd favorite in the Favorite DOTS Lincoln poll . Today's car is another suicide-door model, and the oldest of the bunch as well. This car has had a mild donk treatment, but it's just the wheels- no suspension destruction, bubbly purple window tint, or rhinestone emblems indicating wheel diameter. If you like the way it looks with these wheels, great… and if you don't, it could be switched back to factory wheels and hubcaps in a matter of minutes. For '66, the four-door sedan Continental listed at $5,750, which was 169 bucks more than the Cadillac DeVille four-door hardtop and just $17 more than the Imperial four-door. The Lincoln came with a 340-horse 462 engine, the Cadillac had a 340-horse 429, and the Imperial...
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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. Once again, Alameda has managed to provide a cool International Harvester for our enjoyment, and this time it's a great big '65 Travelall D-1000. Around here, we don't sneer at modern leather-trimmed SUVs because they're faux-macho minivan substitutes- no, we sneer at them because they're making us soft! Here's an example of an off-road-ready machine made by a manufacturer of farm equipment, with an interior appointed in luxurious steel . You could get yourself a Travelall based on the D-1000 half-ton truck chassis for $2,705 back in 1965. The half-ton '65 Suburban sold for $3,270 and the Jeep Wagoneer 4-door was $3,395. What a deal! Of course, you'd have to pay more to upgrade the Travelall from the 240-cube six to the 304 V8 (a wise investment for a vehicle weighing well over 2-1/2 tons). This appears to be a two...
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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. After seeing some kind of weird foreign wagon yesterday, we're going to return to good ol' vintage Detroit iron today. Yes, before The General got all innovative with electron-powered machinery, he was building two-ton cruisers that didn't just park- they dropped anchor. This one is a '74 Buick LeSabre, a car that told OPEC it didn't give a damn about the 1973 Oil Crisis ! I found this car on the same block as the Studebaker Avanti , '69 Buick , and the '65 Ranchero . The Luxus was the high-end LeSabre for '74, and it came standard with a snazzy steering wheel, special hubcaps, and a vinyl notchback seat. The convertible sold for $4,696, about 50 bucks less than the '74 Caprice Classic convertible. Yes, the big Chevy convertible cost more than the big Buick convertible! This example is in great shape, either a low...
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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. 1960s Volvos haven't played a large role in this series; so far we've seen this '66 Amazon , this '69 144 , and this '69 P1800 . Now we're going to add a rare 1800ES wagon, which I found parked along Alameda's San Francisco Bay shoreline (not far from the '68 GMC pickup ). The 1800ES wagon was only made for two years, 1972 and 1973. This '73 listed new at $5,150, or $793 more than a new Olds Vista Cruiser. Actually, the Chevy Vega Kammback wagon was closer in size and styling- though not in build quality- and its $2,323 price tag was less than half that of the Volvo. Perhaps the Datsun 610 wagon was a more effective Volvo sales-stealer back in '73; its price tag was $3,195. This example looks pretty solid for a 35-year-old driver; I haven't seen it since, so I suspect its owner was just making a beach trip...
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