Welcome to Down On The Street, where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. How about a nice early-second-gen Camaro today?

We've had a few second-generation (1970-1981) Camaros in this series, including this '74, this nice '77, this evil '77, and this '78), but today's is our first "small-bumper" example. 1973 was the first year of the Malaise Era, so engine power was down from the year before, but the massive 5 MPH crash bumpers had yet to make their appearance.


No need to worry about Malaise here, though, because the owner tells me he's applied some performance upgrades to the (smog-check-exempt) 350 under the hood. It had 145 horses from the factory, but the usual cam/intake/carb/headers combo adds an easy 100 horsepower to that figure. And, yes, it's a daily driver!