In other words, I'm not making any promises that this Firebird left the factory as one of the 3,196 Trans Ams built for the 1970 model year, given the widespread availability of aftermarket reproduction Trans Am body parts and decals. We might not even be looking at a '70 model here. But, really, who cares? It's a solid-looking 39-year-old Pontiac that still parks and drives on the street, and that's what we love about the Island That Rust Forgot.

The '70 Trans Am came with a 335-horse Pontiac V8, which gave the 3,550-pound car pretty impressive acceleration. Compare that to the 3,106-pound, 348-horsepower '64 GTO, however, and you can see how the inexorable process of Model Bloat requires ever-larger doses of horsepower just to tread water.

Look, the DOTS '66 Mustang lives on the same block, and the DOTS '65 GMC pickup lives nearby as well.

Alameda seems well-stocked with Darts; in this series, we've seen this '64 Dart coupe, this '64 Dart wagon, this '66 Dart GT (which I shot just down the block from today's car), this '69 Dart GT convertible, another '69 Dart GT convertible, this '70 Dart with Buick hubcaps, and this Malaisetastic '75 Dart Swinger.

This street boasts quite a few DOTS honoress; that's the '59 Ford F-100 a few spaces down from the Dart.

Back in 1970, Ralph Truppi and Tommy Kling built an LS6-equipped Chevelle convertible into a machine that utterly dominated the SS/EA class that season. After that, the car knocked around the country in your typical famous-race-car odyssey, eventually getting restored back to street-legal trim and selling for $1.2 million at Barrett-Jackson in 2006. Last month, the same car fetched... $264,000 at auction. What will it be worth when the Financiopocalypse is over?
[New York Times]

I've been saving a lot of street-parked Mustangs in reserve for this series, but the island has so many of them that I'm going to try to knock out the years we haven't seen yet: 1964-1/2, 1970, 1971, and 1972.

This car is owned by an Alameda High School classmate of mine, and it serves as his daily driver; he was a little concerned that it should get a bath before being photographed, but I explained that the whole point of DOTS is that these are real-world cars, not spotless trailer queens. You'll find it parked out in front of his shop, Royal Auto Repair, where it no doubt serves as an advertisement to the many original owners of 60s cars on the island.

Sure, sure, you could wait for the Fiat 500 to show up in dealerships here, but who needs all that heavy sound insulation and mollycoddling safety gear? Not you! What you need, Giovanni, is a classic high-performance Fiat, made back in the day when an American had to be utterly insane really serious to buy one!

You've got a few grand burning a hole in your pocket and you've got your eye on vintage Italian sports cars. Now, you could get a pretty decent Alfa Spider for that kind of money, a very nice Fiat X1/9, maybe even a Lancia Scorpion. But what you really dream about is a Fiat Dino, the Ferrari-engined machine that 93% of you thought was nicely priced at $15,000. Find a Dino on an X1/9 budget? You might as well start looking for Picassos in the Salvation Army… but what's this? A genuine 1970 Fiat Dino 2400 coupe (go here if the ad disappears) for just $3,500! How could such a thing be? Here's how: the original Ferrari V6 has gone AWOL, along with the transmission. Otherwise, the car seems to be in pretty good shape, and it lives in rust-free Southern California. Face it, you can't afford to buy a replacement Ferrari engine, but you could get even more power and stay Italian, simply by picking up a beat-to-crap Alfa Romeo 164 with the 4-valve V6 and doing a little engine swappage. That's right, 208 horses instead of the original 180, and only the most obsessed of Fiat zealots (Fiat zealots do exist, right?) would be sufficiently offended by such a swap to stab you in the eye with a screwdriver.

You'd have a great time driving that Dino around town, but what happens when you take it to your local race track for some track-day hoonage? It'll sound good, no doubt, but you'll be eating the dust of them goddamn kids in their 10-year-old Civics. You need a Fiat race car! In fact, what you need is a Fiat race car that you make quasi-street-legal, so that you can squirm through rollcage bars every time you make a run to the convenience store, then be unable to carry on a conversation because your ears won't stop ringing. Everyone will know you're the dorkiest geek on the face of the earth a first-rank wheelman when they see you blatting down the boulevard in your new daily driver: this 1974 Fiat 128 SL Coupe racer (go here if the ad disappears). It appears to be ready to race as it sits, but getting it street-ready might take some doing. You'll need to install all the gear that nanny-state socialists- the sort that would get a quick smackdown from the Founding Fathers, were they to rise from the dead and see what weaklings Americans have become- demand of drivers: wipers, turn signals, horn, etc. Then you'll need to befriend the helpful folks down at your local DMV, because it's a sure bet that the registration paperwork on this thing will be impossible challenging. And, unless you feel like waiting in line behind Cessnas at your local airport's Gas-N-Fly every time you need some go-go juice, you'll have to do a piston downgrade; 14:1 compression, though awesome, might be a bit extreme for the street.

But no, my '69 144 automatic sedan had dual SU carburetors, not Bobby Bosch fuel injection. How many of these 140Es do you suppose are left in the world? A few hundred? Fewer?

No problem- we'll return to the Thunderbolt another time. Today, we honor the functional scoop that was available as an option on 1969 and 1970 Plymouth Road Runners, a scoop so fearsome that it actually had teeth. Could Citroën's engineers and designers, with all their innovative genius, ever have come up with the Air Grabber? Hell no! Apparently designed by a crew of 9-year-old boys armed with limitless high-sugar-content snacks and a portfolio of every Rat Fink drawing Ed Roth ever made, the Air Grabber was ridiculously awesome (and awesomely ridiculous) and should have been standard equipment on every motor vehicle Chrysler produced between 1969 and today, including the Frank Sinatra Edition Imperial and all those rental Cirruses and Sebrings. And, hey, you can buy repro Air Grabber decals for $15.95 from Year One- just the thing for your PT Cruiser! Thanks to Tonyola for recommending this scoop last week.
Image source: vw-busman

The one that caught my eye first was the very clean, automatic-equipped 1976 BMW 2002. The odometer reads just over 4,000 miles, which means it's either a very well-maintained 104,000-mile car or a 4,000-mile car that spent several decades moldering in a driveway somewhere. When I mentioned this car to 24 Hours Of LeMons Assistant Perpetrator Nick Pon, he had to rush right over to the yard to pull some pieces for his '76 2002.

Right next to the 2002 sits a fairly complete 1970 Triumph Spitfire. The engine and front suspension look pretty nice; a Spitfire Hell Project owner could definitely feast on this junkyard find!

That's not enough? Hey, there's something for you lovers of vintage Japanese machinery as well: a California-built 1988 Toyota Corolla GT-S. It's an automatic car, and the underhood sticker identifies the engine as a 4A-LC… but that sure looks like a 16-valve 4A to me.

Now let's see what the Server Hamsters do when I present them with these photos in our new gallery style. Fasten your seatbelts!

Thing is, these newfangled Elises and whatnot seem to be contaminated by engines built by Ssangyong or Sony or some such place where all the focus is on reliability. As true Lotus pilots know, a real British sports car should be built in a shed, preferably with a dirt floor, and powered by an engine with as much character as the most gratuitous use of italicization can convey! That means you need to get an old Lotus, and- whoo-EEE!- those suckers aren't cheap! Fortunately for you, the same economic meltdown that's turning huge swaths of the country into a 21st-century Dust Bowl is also knocking the hell out of project Lotus prices, and so we've found a couple of projects you can buy for about the same price as a 15-year-old Tercel with a couple of burned valves. Welcome to Project Lotus Hell!

In 1974, a new Elite would cost you close to 20 grand, depending on options. That lofty price tag was more than 5,000 bucks higher than a shiny new '74 Porsche 911 Carrera's, so you figure there's no way on earth you could get an affordable project Elite, right? As we say here in the Hell Garage, there's always a way to get that nightmare dream project into your life, regardless of financial limitations, and this '74 Lotus Elite (go here if the listing disappears) is the proof! Would you believe $500 or best offer? Hot damn! The seller knows the kind of jewel he's got for sale, so he doesn't waste his time or yours with lengthy descriptions. It's a real Lotus, it's yellow, it has a "repaired motor and trans" that "just need installing" and it "needs some restoration." So, you take that repaired motor and trans and twist a couple of wrenches, spend a few hours doing some restoration, and there's your daily-driver Lotus. Easy!

We like the Elite, but it's a little on the bulky side for that true Lotus experience. 2,000 pounds? What a battleship! You need to add some lightness and get a Lotus that scales in at more like 1,300 pounds, and that means a vintage Europa. As we know, demand for the Europa is higher than what you see for the Elite, which means prices are going to be a bit higher. Would you pay a grand for one? Do we even need to ask that question? Here's a '70 Europa with just 56,000 miles on the clock (go here if the listing disappears), and it looks to be a hopeless solid basket case restoration candidate, just waiting for the right sucker buyer to invest his or her entire bank balance and/or sanity a few quality hours in the garage! The Europa came with a high-strung Renault engine, which you may or may not get with this car (the seller drops the intentionally ambiguous statement "Does not run, however, have all body parts"), and a fiberglass body (which means that you only have to worry about rust on the chassis and suspension). Hey, if you can drop a Cadillac 4.9 V8 in a Fiero, why not a Europa? We say it's a great idea!

East Bay native Arlen Ness is well-known these days, but in 1970 he was still building his creations at his house. This bike, which I spotted at a local car show a couple weeks back, was one of his very first machines. It sat behind a bunch of boxes in an Oakland garage for more than three decades, before being unearthed and cleaned up. Check out the sign-painter-grade gold leaf stars on the tank- maybe Detroit could start putting these on their cars as part of their survival strategy!



I saw some other cool stuff at this show, including the legendary Boss Pinto; here's a bonus gallery for y'all:

It's 768 pages of vintage gearhead goodness, for a five-spot: the 1970 Motor Service's Automotive Encyclopedia. Exploded and cutaway views galore, weird prototypes, everything you need! Here's bzr's take on it:

After reading your post about Chrysler's Tech guy (from a while ago), it reminded me of my latest find here: the Motor Service's Automotive Encyclopedia by William K. Toboldt and Larry Johnson, circa 1970! I found this gem in an old thrift store where I was buying a ridiculous shirt for a 70s-themed party (that later got busted by the cops, but that's a different story altogether).

I'm imagining that it was used in a dingy Automotive Fundamentals classroom at the SAE Mechanics Training program at Onondaga Community College, wrenching on AMXs and Jeep Tornado engines, and maybe even one of those oddball Sunbeam Rapier Vs (all of which are wonderfully mentioned in here).

It smells like a church basement and weighs about 20lbs and probably covered in asbestos, but it's a genuinely interesting look into motoring before it devolved into emissions equipment and required a doctorate in computer programming to work on cars. There's an entire chapter devoted to Corvair engines. Safety? In a late-model Charger? Hell yeah, this is 1970! There's even a few mentions of Datsuns and Saab engines, so it's not just America, Fuck Yeah the entire way through.

To think I only got it for $5. And at 768 pages, it's one of the most educational things I've bought.

I fully intend to read this book cover-to-cover, especially the section on carburetors. I figure it'll help me with my 70s motorcycle project, as well as the fact that every car I've ever been interested was built before George McGovern's presidential bid.

Here are some scans of pages I found interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if you had a copy lying around somewhere too, actually...

The cars in the driveway should be familiar to my stalkers regular readers, since I've posted on them a few times before, but the ones in the background will be more challenging. This slide knocked around in the bottom of a drawer for about 35 years, so it features some dust and scratches in addition to the original lack of focus; to make things slightly easier, I've grabbed images of the six non-Martin machines and put them (in their original scanned sizes) in the gallery below. Eight vehicles total- who can identify them all?

1965 was the peak year for big Chevy sales, but pretty close to a million 1970 model year Bel Airs, Caprices, and Impalas roared off the showroom floors. That's more than twice the number of Chevelles and three times the number of Novas that year; the Camaro wasn't even on the sales radar by comparison, with just under 120,000 being sold due to the midyear introduction of the "1970-1/2" models. The full-size models really were the face of Chevrolet during this period, though you'd never know that now by looking at the machinery at car shows and cruise nights.


This Caprice is certainly on the rough side, but it's still here and still getting the job done. We've seen two other 1970 full-size Chevrolets in this series- this pretty nice one and this terrifyingly evil one- but today's is the first one that still has emblems identifying the model. The previous two are probably Impalas, but we can't be sure.

When I first caught sight of this thing from a block or so away, I thought I'd found a Triumph. Hooray! I wasn't disappointed when I saw it came from an island nation other than the UK, because we've only seen one of these before in this series. I can't figure out the exact year on this machine, but the side marker lights make it a '68, '69, or '70. Note: It appears that the non-teardrop-shape side marker lights indicate that this is a 1970 model year car.


There's always the name problem with these cars; Nissan marketed this car as the Datsun Sports 1600 in North America, but I've yet to hear anyone use that name. In Japan, it was sold as the Fairlady, the official company designation was SPL311, and most Americans call it the Datsun Roadster. When you see Keith Maney's GM V6-powered Datsun at LeMons South, you'll call it madness!


Look, it's the DOTS 1975 Celica, with the Evil Primer Chevelle parked right in front of it! The '71 510 lives nearby as well. Great neighborhood for old iron.

Back in high school and middle school the wedgie (or as we called it, the wedge) was something you most certainly didn't want, under any circumstance and you definitely didn't appreciate it when it came along. But in car design, the wedge is something you can appreciate.

The beautiful and technical shape was used by many of the top design houses of the seventies and was a signal the future had officially arrived. While not the most aerodynamic form in practice, it certainly looked the part and helped usher in a new era of automotive design. Italian design houses ItalDesign, Bertone and Pininfarina were at the forefront of the movement, but the Japanese, Germans and the U.S. jumped on the bandwagon shortly thereafter

10) 1972 Lotus Esprit M70

First displayed at the Turin Motor Show in 1972, the Lotus Esprit M70 was designed by Giugiaro at Ital Design and was built on a widened and lengthened Europa chassis. After positive reviews from the public Colin Chapman decided to put the Esprit into production. The final design was completed in 1973 with many of the concept cues intact and when the then GM owned Lotus decided to build Peter Stevens redesign in 1987, many of those original cues remained.

Fun fact: that you couldn't call yourself a car guy without knowing already: Roger Moore drove a submersible version in the 1977 James Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me.

9) 1989 Vector W8

In 1989, after nearly two decades of development, Gerald Wiegert revealed his Vector W8 to the public. Extensive use of aeronautical building techniques were to be W8s selling point, but shoddy quality and a lack of funding eventually brought down the U.S.-built Lamborghini competitor in the mid-nineties. The W8 drew its inspiration from the 1968 Alfa Romeo Carabo and many other wedge cars in our list and is still a beautiful car today and you can pick up one of the few examples for a steal; nearly 20 percent of the original $685,000 asking price.

Fun fact: The Vector W8 was featured briefly in the 1993 movie, Rising Sun.

8) 1972 E25 BMW Turbo

The E25 BMW Turbo was initially built to celebrate the upcoming 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, but was later used as the inspiration for the M1, 8-Series, Z1 and the new M1 Homage concept. BMW built the Turbo concept as a rolling display for new safety and engineering technologies as well as showing that BMW had officially left the difficult 60's behind. Penned by BMW's French head of design, Paul Bracq, the Turbo concept was styled after the most dramatic Italian supercars of the day and featured an advanced radar system that warned the driver of close objects such as curbs and cars.

Fun fact: The Turbo featured two BMW badges on the rear – symbolizing BMW's exceptional quality – a cue that made it onto the production M1 and M1 Homage concept.

7) 1978 Dome Zero

Dome was and still is a race car manufacturer in Japan and in 1978 they gave the world the Dome Zero concept at the Geneva Motor Show. Intended to show Dome's intention of building a homologation special for a new line of sportscars; it was unable to pass Japanese homologation. In 1979, Dome debuted a revised Zero, dubbed the P2, with U.S. market bumpers and safety equipment added to the design. In the same year, a racing effort was launched at Le Mans but the ‘Zero RL' failed to finish the race. Shortly after, investors pulled their funds and the Dome Zero was officially dead.

Fun fact: The Dome Zero was featured in Gran Turismo 4, Auto Modellista on the PS2 and Sega GT on the XBOX.

6) 1970 Lancia Stratos Zero

At the 1970 Turin Motor Show, Bertone showed off a styling exercise called the Lancia Stratos Zero. The Lancia Stratos HF roadcar was based very loosely off of this concept though the similarities are few and far between. The futuristic Zero stood 838mm tall and was so low that conventional doors could not be used and to gain access, drivers would have to raise the windshield and walk into the car.

Fun fact: The Stratos Zero appeared in Michael Jackson's 1988 film, Moonwalker.

5) 1972 Maserati Boomerang

In 1971 the Maserati Boomerang was shown at the Turin Motor Show as a mockup and then in 1972 the Geneva Motor Show saw the debut of the fully realized Maserati Boomerang concept. It sat next to the Lotus Esprit M70 as both were designed by Giugiaro at ItalDesign. At 1070mm high, it's not the shortest wedge in the list, but it did have a 15 degree windshield rake – the steepest rake you could achieve while maintaining visibility, albeit very little. ItalDesign used the Boomerang as inspiration when designing the DMC Delorean (most noticeable in the rear view) in the eighties.

Fun fact: Intended as a showcar, the Boomerang was registered as a roadcar and was actually sold in 1974 to a private collector which brings us to 2005 when it was auctioned at Christie's for a cool $1,000,000.

4) 1969 Holden Hurricane RD001

The Holden Hurricane was an experimental concept built in 1969 and was the first product of the GM Holden Research and Development group. The Hurricane's ultra low 990mm stance would have made ingress and egress difficult with traditional doors, so an electro-mechanical powered canopy was used and swung forward over the front wheels. Also included were power elevated seats that both rose up and out of the way along with the steering column to make exiting the Hurricane easier. When climbing into the car the seats would lower to a semi-reclined position and the roof would close overhead.

Fun fact: A similar canopy design was used on both the Saab Aero X and the Batmobile from the Tim Burton Batman movies.

3) 1970 Ferrari PF Modulo

Painted black for the 1970 Geneva Motor Show and then re-sprayed white for its debut at the 1970 Turin Motor Show; the Paulo Martin penned Pininfarina-Ferrari Modulo concept gained quite a reputation and won numerous international design awards – 22 of them – for a car that almost wasn't produced. The cars release was held for over a year because of an apprehensive Sergio Pininfarina. Developed using the Ferrari 512-S racer as a basis, the 935mm high PF Modulo was built to explore new construction technologies and to show off the raw passion of the Italian design house.

Fun fact: Paulo Martin was sketching a Rolls-Royce Camargue dashboard when the idea struck him to make the first sketch of the Modulo. You could say he was more than a little bored with the Rolls.

2) 1971 Lamborghini Countach

Designed by Gandini for Bertone in 1971, the original Lamborghini Countach concept was the most pure version the public would ever see of this car. The wild scissor doors were first seen on another car in our list (the Alfa Romeo Carabo concept) and were used primarily because of the extremely wide chassis, but we think the real reason is because Gandini knew every rice boy would want them on their econo-hatch some day. The Countach name was derived from the dialect of the Piedmont region in northern Italy, literally meaning astonishment and amazement. The pure design of the concept translated loosely into the production LP400 though it was short lived when splitters, wings and U.S. bumper requirements were added to the mix in the LP400S, LP500 and QV models.

Fun fact: The Countach was featured in the 1981 movie, The Cannonball Run, and is one of the most replicated cars to date.

1) 1968 Alfa Romeo Carabo

The 1968 Alfa Romeo Carabo is the most significant wedge car and paved the way for many of the cars on this list. Designed by Marcello Gandini of Bertone fame, it was revealed at Porte de Versailles in Paris in 1968 to an absolutely stunned crowd. The Lamborghini Countach concept that arrived 3 years later drew inspiration from the Carabo in its wedge form, wheel house openings and its notoriously cool scissor-doors, though the Countach wasn't the only car that took inspiration from the Carabo. You can see inspired cues from many sports cars and supercars like the Diablo, 4th gen Camaro and Vector. Vector took the inspiration quite literally by duplicating many of the shapes of the front and side profile in its W8. Many wealthy individuals tried to purchase the Carabo including an Arab prince or two, but thankfully Bertone decided to hold on to it and now the Carabo spends its days relaxing inside the Alfa Romeo museum in Arese, Italy.

Fun fact: The unique name "Carabo" and its green paint were derived from the small green beetle, Carabus Olympiae.

Honorable Mentions

Narrowing down our search for the top ten wedge cars was difficult and we couldn't let this list pass without mention of a few other notable wedges. The DMC DeLorean was the hardest to leave off the list based on its cult follow from the Back to the Future films. Another difficult car to omit was the popular Triumph TR7/TR8 which was produced from 1974 to 1981. In the gallery below you'll find the rest of the cars that we thought were worth mentioning. Enjoy!

[via Lotus Esprit Turbo]

Even non-AMC freaks appreciate the original AMX (reviews are much more mixed for the Malaise AMX), but the days of snapping one up for cheap are decades in the past. You want a really nice two-seater AMX, you must pay. But must you pay $45,000? That's what we're dealing with here. The car looks great: original California car, stripped and repainted, all the original accessories down to the canned spare-tire air, etc… but it's not a 4-speed and that price is a real jolt. What do you think?
[Cardiff Classics]

Thanks to LTDScott for the tip!

Usually, when a vehicle owner's political beliefs- be they of the strident Left or the enraged Right- are sufficiently powerful to make painting messages on the vehicle's body seem like a good idea, that person keeps the messages up to date. Not so with this '70 Chevy; after the mid-to-late 1990s, it appears that no cause fired the truck's owner up like his or her loathing for Bill Clinton.


Proposition 209, which abolished ethnic preferences in California schools, dates from 1996. You'd think there'd be at least one recent right-wing talk-radio bumper sticker on the thing, but it's all totally vintage. Now I need to find the lefty counterpart to this truck; perhaps a VW Transporter with big "EL SALVADOR IS SPANISH FOR VIETNAM" signs on the flanks in peeling, faded house paint.


Since we don't see any 307, 350, or 400 emblems on this truck, we can assume it shipped from the factory with a 250- or 292-cube inline six. Since replacement engines tend to have a revolving door into and out of the engine compartments of old Chevrolets, there's no telling what powers this truck today.

I'm not able to get an exact model year for this car, what with my lack of early-Datsun expertise, but the pre-Malaise bumpers and side marker lights indicate that it's probably a late-60s/early-70s car. I'm sure there's someone out there who can point to some year-specific items and get us an exact year (this car isn't listed in the state smog check database and, no, I'm not willing to risk the rage of car owners by trying to get the VIN off the dash tag).


The wagons don't have the snazzy independent rear suspension installed in the sedan and coupe 510s, but they were still pretty good performers for their day. Other than the big tires, this one appears pretty close to stock condition, but there's no telling what's under the hood.


It's great when two DOTS cars live within sight of one another; that's the Evil 1970 Cadillac across the street.

I'd never heard of The Dude prior to researching Dodge D series special-edition trucks for the DOTS '78 Power Wagon earlier today, but it wasn't long before I came upon DodgeDude.com, a website devoted to the 1,500 to 2,000 Dudes built during the 1970 and 1971 model years. It goes without saying that Allpar would have extensive Dude info as well. The Dude Sport Trim Package was available on Sweptlines in the United States and Canada (where it was sold as the Fargo Sweptline Dude) and included a special tailgate, bumblebee stripes, Dude emblems, and other goodies. Let the Big Lebowski jokes commence!
[DodgeDude.com, Allpar]