Alameda Street Sighting - 1951 Dodge Coronet

In my final post of 2016 I said I hoped to be more active in the new year. Here we are halfway through February and nothing to show for myself. So in recognition of Valentine's Day and to show my loyal readers some love, here's a pink 1951 Dodge Coronet coupe I ran across in Alameda last year.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1946 Chevrolet Stakebed Truck

Two years ago I featured a mid-1940s Chevy commercial flatbed truck. That one was a challenge to identify because of I don't know commercial trucks very well. Here we have another one which may be a 3600 series 3/4 ton model, which if I've guessed correctly is classified as a model 3609 stake bed.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1976 Morris Mini Clubman

It's been a little while since our last car feature so here's a little feature on a little car. I don't recall ever seeing a Mini Clubman before I spotted this one on the streets of Alameda, California. Okay, I've seen a lot of the modern MINI Clubman, the extra-long variant of the MINI Cooper. But this is the original Clubman, an effort to modernize the classic Mini whose original design and styling dated to 1959. Clubman was a more expensive car than the regular Mini and featured a longer front end with improved crash safety and easier service access.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1973 Pontiac Le Mans Sport Coupe

For most car brands, 1973 wasn't a banner year. It's memorable mainly for bad things, like the OPEC oil crisis and the beginning of federal 5-mph bumper standards. A lot of cars that year were retreads of 1970 or '71 models. For General Motors, 1973 brought the introduction of the midsize A platform's all-new "Colonnade" body. Colonnade refers to the style of roof pillars GM employed to allow frameless door glass without building a traditional hardtop. This was intended to allow the car to perform better in a rollover crash. The change was sort of a big deal since it meant a new Chevelle, new Olds Cutlass, new Buick Century and new Pontiac Le Mans. All of these models were huge volume sellers so getting them right was important. All mainstream Pontiac midsize models were now badged as Le Mans, with such option packages and styles as Luxury Le Mans, Le Mans Sport, Le Mans Safari (wagons), and for more adventurous buyers a GTO or new "European-styled" Grand Am could be specified. The Grand Prix luxury coupe was also based on the Le Mans this year.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1939 Ford V8 Panel Truck

Ahh, patina. One man's restoration project is another man's rat rod. Coming to Alameda from Barn Fine Classics in Washington state is this '39 Ford panel truck with not very much paint but a whole lot of character.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1976 Toyota Corolla Deluxe Liftback

When my parents were just starting out, they had a choice to make: make a down payment on a small suburban ranch house or buy a Toyota Corolla SR5 Liftback. They picked the house. It was a wise choice, but the Corolla Liftback was and still is an interesting offering in the economy-car market of the era. I've always liked them, especially in lemon yellow.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1970 Chevrolet Impala Sport Sedan

Admittedly I usually don't like photographing really beat-up cars but I do if they're interesting or uncommon. A 1970 Chevy Impala four-door hardtop used to be a common sight on America's roads, but certainly isn't anymore. GM produced over 600,000 Impalas in 1970, the vast majority of which were V8 cars. This number does not even include low-trim Biscaynes and Bel Airs or high-trim Caprices! I have seen an estimate of 46,000 for Impala Sport Sedan production but no actual number seems to be available.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1958 Nash Metropolitan 1500 Series III

After a succession of several "bad" vintage compact cars that are sort of cool, let's look at one of the early compacts that was a bit of a joke in its own time. This is the second Nash Metropolitan that's appeared here. Both hailed from Alameda, a place that with its 25-mph speed limits appears to be the domain of Model Ts, neighborhood electric vehicles and Nash Metropolitans.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1977 Pontiac Grand Prix SJ

My previous post about the 1979 Chrysler 300 discussed the Malaise era's idea of a personal luxury car. Fake wood, hood ornament, baroque detailing, padded vinyl roof, you name it. Exotic, expensive-sounding European name? You got it. Take a look at the 1977 Pontiac Grand Prix SJ and you get all those things. And much like the 300 was a sport version of the Cordoba, the SJ was the sport version of the Grand Prix.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1964 Oldsmobile Jetstar 88

Few cars have carried as many marketing names as the Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight. Some have been straightforward trim levels, such as DeLuxe 88 and Super 88, but Oldsmobile has long been associated with rockets, so much so that their logo was a stylized rocket for decades. The Rocket V8 engine sparked a lineage that would include the Rocket 88, Dynamic 88, Jetstar 88, and more puzzling Delmont and Delta 88s. Delta was the most enduring nameplate, lasting more than twenty years. Jetstar, as seen here, was the cheapest full-size Olds and the name was only used from '64 to '66.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1970 Dodge Charger

Ask a person about the 1968-1970 Dodge Charger in popular culture and you'll get three answers. Older people will probably say the bad guys' black '68 R/T in Bullitt's famous chase scene. Young people might say the black '70 drag car driven by Vin Diesel in a couple of the Fast and the Furious movies (he also drove a modified '69 Charger Daytona replica in Furious 6). And most everyone knows a certain gravity-defying orange '69 R/T with the doors welded up and a horn that plays Dixie. Incidentally, virtually all of those cars were destroyed in filming their respective roles. But this green '70 Charger has survived and lives a quiet life in suburban Alameda.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix Model J

I admit that this generation of the Pontiac Grand Prix isn't my favorite. I like the earlier 1960s models including the '62, '63 and '65. These second-generation cars strike me as a slightly different flavor of the first-generation Chevy Monte Carlo, which is actually not true. The all-new '69 Grand Prix beat the Monte to market by one year, came with different engines and rode on a stretched version of the Monte Carlo's chassis. So while the Monte Carlo made the General Motors "G-body" famous, it was technically the Grand Prix that used it first.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1957 Chrysler New Yorker

One of my favorite cars on the Island that Rust Forgot, also known as the city of Alameda, California, is this excellent 1957 Chrysler New Yorker four-door hardtop. Chrysler Corporation was really at the top of its game when Virgil Exner unveiled his Forward Look lineup of dramatic yet graceful new cars for '57. The fanciest four-door Chrysler that year (apart from the Imperial, which was its own luxury brand) was the New Yorker. We've already looked at a base-model '57 Chrysler Windsor pillared sedan, now see how the other half lived.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1960 Cadillac Series 62 Coupe

It's rare that one finds a pair of matching street sightings in the same place, but once in a while one encounters two cars that go together well, even if they weren't in the same location or found at the same time. It seems as good a time as any to bring two daily-driver 1960 Cadillacs out of my archives. First up is a base-model Series 62 coupe from the city of Alameda.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1965 Rambler Classic 770 Coupe

For some reason nearly every Rambler Classic I see is a Cross Country station wagon. The sedans must all be parts cars or daily drivers for old ladies in the upper Midwest or something. I've come across one '63 four-door sedan, one '62 two-door sedan, and one '65 convertible. And then there was this handsome 1965 Classic 770 hardtop coupe.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1973 Toyota Corona Mark II

If you're a fan of old Hong Kong action movies, you've probably seen
some Toyota Corona Mark IIs ramping through the air and getting smashed into other nondescript Japanese compacts as collateral damage from a car chase. Or perhaps you spotted one of these as highway traffic in an episode of CHiPs. But apart from period TV footage, these cars don't appear to have survived in significant numbers. I was pretty excited to see this one on what Murilee Martin (of Jalopnik and The Truth About Cars) called the "Island the Rust Forgot", Alameda.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1965 Chevrolet Impala Sport Sedan

Alameda Street Sighting - 1969 AMC Javelin SST

My friends know that in addition to being a big Ford fan, I love American Motors products. And one of my favorite AMCs ever is the 1969 Javelin. The Javelin was AMC's entry in the pony car market in the 1960s and '70s, with flavors ranging from six-banger economy coupe to tire-smoking muscle car. If that formula sounds familiar, it should. AMC was late to the party but the Javelin - particularly the short-wheelbase AMX - could party as hard as most of its competitors.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1966 Datsun 411

This was one of my most anticipated scores for the blog, at least within the city of Alameda. Everyone knows the Datsun Z-cars, and a fair number are familiar with the Fairlady roadsters, but the early mainstream passenger cars are much less often seen in the United States today. The Datsun Bluebird is a model best known to Americans as the 510, sold from 1968 to 1974. But before that, Datsun was a bit player in the compact market in the US, selling small pickup trucks and dowdy little economy cars. In late 1963 Datsun brought out the Pininfarina-styled 410, a car that made a Datsun sedan a little more interesting to look at in one's driveway. The 411 was added in 1965, which traded the 1.2 liter four-cylinder for a 1.3 liter unit producing 67 horsepower.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1966 Chevrolet Corvair Corsa Turbo Convertible

There are already a lot of Corvairs on here, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. The Chevrolet Corvair is a fairly unique car, and a customized Corvair is even more so. This one is perhaps the most unique factory specification as well, a turbocharged 1966 Corvair Corsa convertible.