The Skylark Custom came with the luxury trim package, including fender skirts and plush padded vinyl interior. The standard engine was a 250-inch six, but just about all buyers opened their wallets for the 230-horse Buick 350 (and some went ahead and paid for the 300 horsepower 400).


Mmmm, padded vinyl! This car listed at $3,098 new, which was 97 bucks more than the Fairlane GT convertible (and 700 bucks less than the '68 Lotus Europa).


These photographs date from more than a year ago; it was actually one of the first cars I shot for this series, but I saved it "for a special occasion" for so long that I forgot the photos even existed.

It's had a restrained rat-rod-ization, which I think always looks pretty good on a station wagon. Of course, the '64 Dart also looks pretty good dressed in unadorned beaterhood.


Painting stripes on the roof is a nice touch. I haven't heard this wagon run, so I can't vouch for the presence of the lumpy-cammed V8 the paint job deserves. The standard powerplant in '64 was the 170-cube Slant Six.


This car is an official Radiator Hoes vehicle! The Hoes have a strong Alameda presence, so count on seeing some more of their rides soon.

I've seen this Oldsmobile Cutlass F85 in San Francisco Chinatown. Sitting around in front of corner of a tourist filled street in front of a shop called Chinatown Bizaar (Sacrmento/Grant). It's almost always in the same spot or within a block or two. Black CA plates, moo cow seat covers and the infamous blue handicap plaque.
It can also be seen on google maps street view at the exact same spot.
BTW I was one of the tourists. Didn't have a lot of time to take the pictures as my group was leaving. There were too many people on the sidewalk in the way, so getting a decent shot was not the easiest.
I imagine that the owner also has this red coupe version as it's in the same parking spot.

This car doesn't seem to move much, judging by the dusty windows, but it looks to be complete and fairly solid. I found it parked on the same block as the BMW 3.0 CSi, though I'm pretty sure they're not owned by the same person.


Most of these cars came with 194-cube sixes or 283 small-block V8s, though the options list included the 300-horse 327 (you had to wait for '66 to get a big-block Chevelle from the factory). This car has no 283 or 327 emblems, but there's no telling what's powering it these days; it might be on its 10th engine by this time.


The paint is faded from decades of California sun (and we can assume the interior is in similar shape) and the chrome is peeling off the bumpers, but it wouldn't take much to get this car looking sharp. And now, since polls are fun, let's vote on which street-parked Alameda GM A-body is our favorite so far.

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The Swinger was the name Chrysler put on the 2-door Dart with the Custom mid-level trim package. The Special Edition series was the priciest Dart, though the real hot ticket was the $254 "Hang Ten" package, which got you surfer-esque graphics and tape stripes.


The standard engine on the '75 Dart was the 96-horsepower Slant Six 225, though you could get the Dart 360 Sport with a V8 boasting 200 horses.


This Swinger is in decent condition, with all four hubcaps still present and accounted for and no visible rust. The vinyl top is bad (of course), but other than that it's weathered 33 years quite well.

A high-school friend of mine had a gold '67 like this one, equipped with lumpy-cammed 340 and 4-speed, and it probably took 15 years before his car's burnout marks finally disappeared from the stretch of Encinal Avenue in front of the school. My friend was also an ardent supporter of the Alameda High tradition of Open Header Fridays (eventually crushed by do-gooder teachers and motorcycle cops with strong ticket-writing hands, the tradition supposedly stretched back to the island's car clubs of the late 1940s), and the Barracuda may have been the ideal straight-pipe machine. California law at the time stated that cars with engine displacement under 1600cc were not required to have mufflers, so every day was Open Header Friday for my '58 Beetle (which technically qualified, though its engine was actually quite a bit larger than 1600cc). Damn kids these days with their turbochargers quieting the engines down!


Right. So, this Barracuda is pretty rough, but I don't see any rust and it drives (or at least changes it parking spot) regularly. For '67, your Barracuda came with the good ol' bulletproof Slant Six 225 as the standard engine; those wanting a V8 could have the nearly bulletproof 273 or the hoonage-enhanced 383 big-block. With Malaise 360s so widely available in junkyards these days, I'm guessing there are more 360-powered '67 Barracudas out there than examples with 273s. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.


It's Friday, which means it's Poll Day! You pick your favorite DOTS Plymouth so far, and what a variety we have to choose from! Frankly, I can't bring myself to pick one, though I'm leaning in the direction of the '47... or maybe the Fury... no, wait, the Evil Satellite! And, yes, Plymouth-badged Mitsubishis count, too.

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The Dart is one of the few vintage Detroit cars in which I prefer the six-cylinder engine to the V8, but then the Slant Six makes even the 318 seem flaky. Of course, a 340/4-speed Dart might convince me to give up the Leaning Tower of Power.
This Dart gets driven every day, and there's no telling how many times its 5-digit odometer has been turned over.
Check out those Buick hubcaps, which actually look pretty good on a Dodge. This car parks in front of a house in which a high-school girlfriend lived back in the day, and I have vivid memories of cutting the engine in my straight-pipe-equipped '58 Beetle about a block away and coasting up to this house in total silence, so I could drop my girlfriend off without tipping off her parents about how late we'd been out. Then, of course, I'd have to push the VW down the street a few doors before firing the 1835cc back up and driving away in as mellow a fashion as a 17-year-old with no mufflers could manage. This is the kind of flashback I get all the time, living in the town in which I grew up.
But enough of my old-time Alameda gibberish- it's poll time! We've had a bunch of A-bodies in this series, and it's time we found out which one is the crowd favorite. Sorry, haven't got a Demon on the list, but I'm keeping my eyes open for one.

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The coolest thing about the '71 Valiant is that it's the car Spielberg used in The Greatest Valiant Movie of All Time. The only problem with the '71 was that Chrysler had axed the pushbutton shifter by that time.


Sure, the Valiant was a low-priced car, but it still had style.


Generally, if you're willing to apply the Bondo, you're willing to sand it. Primer helps, too. Looks like this car's owner ran out of bodywork ambition early in the project.


You still get a hint of fins in this design, just enough to remind us of the crazy machinery Chrysler was building in the late 50s. Check out the mid-80s CSM parking permits. Vintage!

Like, say, this 1973 Plymouth Scamp that I found right off Alameda's main downtown drag.


These Chrysler turn signal indicators always seemed like a great feature; you were way less likely to drive 300 miles with your blinker going if you had these things.


The removal of the vent windows on the Scamp was considered quite the stylish move back then, although I've always thought the old vent windows were very useful. Yeah, they always produced some wind noise, but you just cranked up the AM a bit louder to compensate.


Check out that vinyl top! The strange shape of the back window gives the impression that the passenger compartment is a vacuum, sucking the glass inward.


In '73, you could get Plymouth's version of the A-body with three different nameplates. The Valiant was the sedan, the Duster was the coupe, and the Scamp was the hardtop coupe.


If I go more than a week or two without putting up another Chrysler A-body, remind me. Maybe I'll find one with a turbocharged Slant Six!

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Of course it's got the small-blockiest of small-blocks, the good ol' 350 (which means the original buyer didn't cheap out and get the standard 307 or the cheapskate six, though he or she also passed on the 400 and the big-blocks). Well, actually, only the owner knows what it actually has under the hood by now, what with the mix-and-match nature of Chevy A-Bodies and small-block engines. Hell, maybe the owner doesn't even know.

This particular El Camino is fairly rough, but it's been spared the horrific rust that assails these cars in the salty-roads regions of the country.

It's a bit odd seeing a semi-wretched-looking El Camino that doesn't have any broken household appliances, cylinder heads, or 40-dog bottles in the bed. Maybe the owner just cleaned it out.

However, the bed does feature what appears to be a healthy coating of bathtub caulk on some of the seams.

Looks just like a Chevelle from this angle, don't she?

It would be nice to set up a drag race between this car and the Evil '69 Ranchero that lives a half-dozen blocks away. Might not be a fair race, though, since the Ranchero has a 4-speed and looks suspiciously like it's got Enhanced Meanness under the hood.

It's a bit sad looking at this car/truck, knowing what we do about the less-attractive designs and low-power engines that afflicted the '73 and later El Caminos. Perhaps a shipment of Holden utes would cheer us up, GM!