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's car is our fourth Chevy Impala; we've seen a '65 sedan, a '65 Super Sport, and a beautifully wretched '70 prior to today.
I'm always reminded of the car driven by Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) in Repo Man when I see a full-size Chevy from this era. The original Alex Cox screenplay (yes, I live by the Repo Code to the extent that I have a copy) was very specific about the make, model, and year of every single vehicle in the movie, and Bud's car was supposed to be a '70.
Even with the bent front bumper, this car is way nicer than my 1:25 scale Beater '70 Impala model, but it's got the right number of doors. Actually, it's possible that this car is really a Caprice, since there are no identifying emblems (the Bel Air and Biscayne models didn't come in two-door versions for '70).
The interior looks quite nice, with the big ol' vinyl bench seat that was the standard back then.
The base engine for the big '70 Chevy was the 250-inch six. However, hardly anybody wanted to drag a 3,800-pound car around with 155 horsepower, so most of these cars have the 350 small-block. Of course, you could go wild when looking at the options list and get yourself any Chevy engine all the way up to the 345 horsepower LS4 big-block... and your friendly Chevy dealer would likely have found a way to get the factory to install the mighty 460-horse LS6, had you produced a sufficiently thick stack of bills.
