Was in Dawson City, central Yukon last week and came across these Astons and the Lotus Elan on a Panama to Anchorage rally. Sorry for poor photos but they're beautiful cars and I thought you'd appreciate the extreme "downstreetness" of these.

Hey Jalops

User Crazygutgut here.
I was driving down 19th Ave (in San Francisco) on Saturday July 5th when I spotted the "Escachero." I wonder if the guy is a fan, cause he spraypainted Escachero on the doors.

Most of the car is a 90ish Ford escort. the back of the cab seems to be made from a 60's Chevy or Ford pickup. the fins I'm not sure what those came off of, they looked pretty rough, but he did have "Coupe de Ville" scripts on the fins.

I still gotta get picks of the 1977 Honda Civic-amino that is driving around my hood, too....

Not much to say.. but on my way to Trader Joe's in West Hollywood, I noticed this car covered in orange blossoms... but I felt a good Karma here....Yes, I know, I'm an old fashioned romantic type!

Q: What is a Down On The Street car?
The original Down On The Street Series features old and/or interesting cars and trucks found parked on public streets in the city of Alameda, California, where I live. Alameda is located (mostly) on an island in the San Francisco Bay, about five miles from San Francisco and a few hundred yards from Oakland. Since the Alameda DOTS series has been so popular, we've expanded the concept with the Down On The Street Bonus Edition (DOTSBE), for vehicles found anywhere else.

Q: So does that mean that the Down On The Street Bonus Edition posts are for cars found outside of Alameda?
Yes, that is correct. If the main tag above the post's title reads "Down On The Street," the vehicle was photographed by me on the street in Alameda. If it reads "Down On The Street Bonus Edition," the vehicle was shot somewhere other than Alameda, generally by Jalopnik readers but sometimes by me.

Q: Wait, what? Does that mean I can send in photographs of cool old cars I find where I live, and you'll post them on the site?
It sure does! And this is as good a time as any for me to share some tips that will make the whole DOTSBE process easier for me... and the easier it is for me to deal with your photos, the more likely I'll be to post 'em:

• DOTSBE vehicles must be on public property. That means no driveways or yards, unless you OK it with the owner first. Parked on the street is best, parking lots might be OK, and car shows are out.
  
• Email DOTSBE photos to me, Murilee Martin, not to the Jalopnik tips email. We don't need giant email attachments clogging up the tips inbox.
  
• The maximum useful size for DOTSBE photos is 1280 pixels wide. 1280 is the max width for photos in our galleries, so anything beyond that just makes the email take longer to send/receive (and forces me to resize the images).
  
• When emailing DOTSBE photos, Include "DOTS" in the subject line. I have email filters set up to direct DOTSBE submissions into a super-high-priority mail folder, so an email with a "DOTS" subject ("DOTSBE" and "Down On The Street" also work) makes organizing things that much easier for me.
  
• Include relevant info with your DOTSBE photos. That means the location of the vehicle (city/country), anything interesting you might know about it, and your Jalopnik commenter name (if you have one), so I can give you credit if I use the photos in a post.
  
• Be patient. I get a lot of DOTSBE photos, most of them are great, and I'll get to yours... eventually. Sometimes they'll go up the day after I get them, and sometimes it takes a year.

• Weather: Alameda is an island in the San Francisco Bay, and the weather is quite mild. It doesn't snow here, and rain is very rare between April and November. This means rust isn't much of a problem. The sun isn't as harsh as in the Southwest, so upholstery and paint hold up pretty well.
  
• Limited Off-Street Parking: Most of present-day Alameda was completely built up by the early 20th century, and the 1906 earthquake- which devastated much of the region- barely touched the island. This means most of the houses were built before cars were beyond the novelty Horseless Carriage stage, so garages aren't as common as in other cities. Many houses built in the 1910s and 1920s have semi-basement garages intended for tall, narrow cars with high clearance that can deal with a 30-degree grade. The water table is so close to the surface here that digging a deep garage requires some serious sump-pump hardware, lest you find your ride in four feet of water.
  
• Hot Rod Tradition: Alameda has had a vibrant culture of hoons hopping up their cars since the days of the Model T, and so you have the old guys passing on the virus to the younger guys. Some of the car clubs on the island have unbroken lineages dating back to the 1920s. And that leads straight to...
  
• The Island That Time Forgot: Alameda is a weird place, and I mean that in the best possible way. It's essentially a David Lynch movie set in a sunny California climate, among Victorian and Craftsman architecture and a small-town mentality that belies its urban grid street pattern and very high population density. The island is full of old people who never cross a bridge, whose original-owner classics never drive faster than 25 and are used only for short trips to Ole's Waffles or Lee Auto Supply. It's also full of young people who start to feel that an old car just, you know, make the most sense. You never know what this town will do to you; Jim Morrison arrived on the island as a wholesome Navy kid, and by the time he departed for LA he'd become a dopefiend weirdo poet.

I had to run up to my storage locker in Mukilteo yesterday, about a 20 minute drive from where I live, and while I was there I decided to document the two finest pieces of Detroit engineering currently being stowed there. One is a survivor, the other...well, it's complicated. I'm assuming since someone is paying god knows how much per year to store his very much incomplete vehicle there, he still has clings to the idea that it will one day run again.

Enclosed you will find two sets of photographs. The first set is of the saddest, yet most hopeless optimistic, '57ish Ranchero in the world. One's first reaction seeing it (aside from the generally awesome feeling one gets when looking upon anything -chero or -amino) is that it, to put it mildly, is not currently in running condition. In fact, it is not in any sort of condition at all. Missing are the front end and all of the magic contained therein (like the engine), everything inside the cabin, the cabin doors, all of the glass, all the chrome, the frame, the axles, the wheels, the drivetrain, and the tailgate. How is this a car, you might ask, and not something offered as a part on craigslist or awaiting the Crusher? Well, you're just not looking hard enough. In the owner's mind, in just a few short years and with a modicum of effort (how hard could it be to track down Ranchero parts?) he will be cruising the tree-lined and weed-choked boulevards of Seattle's northern suburbs in the only cartruck to survive a nuclear test. He will be driving fast just to outrun the ladies who want him and his Ranchero and the men who want to buy it from him. But he belongs to no woman and he will sell his pride to no one. He has only one thing on his mind - a car with two seats and a bed for haulin'.

The second set is a shining example of auto neglect. At first glance, I thought this car had been underwater, what with it's myriad water-based lifeforms clinging to its seals and all. Heck, there are even visible signs of green slime inside the windshield. Perhaps it was stowed under a dock on the Sound, or it had been pulled from Lake Washington and the skeletons inside given a proper burial. I was disappointed to find out that inside this '68 Calais (I think) was clean. I can understand keeping your car in this sort of condition if you use it as a daily driver and have to park under a waterfall, but this sort of abuse is really unacceptable when it spends it's entire year at a storage facility. Buy a car cover, or at least give it a tarp!

lowmiles

I live right down the street from this beaut. I tried to get ahold of the owner to get some background information, but no dice.This one seems to have been converted into a camper of some sort - looks like cabinets inside in the back. Check out that medieval-looking tow hitch! I think the grille is a replacement, because all the photos I've found (about 4) show a big "blitz" Opel lightning logo in the middle. Anyways, this thing does move at least, because it disappears come street cleaning time, and makes its way back.

Trying to find information on these things is like pulling teeth - here is what I know. This is a mid-60's Opel Blitz firetruck, with livery for the volunteer firefighting brigade of Viechtach. Viechtach is a Bavarian town on the Czech border, northeast of Munich. It seems to be later than '61 because it has a one-piece window, but earlier than 1971. Around 1971, Opel Blitzes became rebadged Bedford vans. I couldn't find a damn thing about engines, except that the 30's and WWII era Blitz trucks were powered by 3.6L inline jobs making roughly 75hp. It wouldn't surprise me if some variation of this engine, rather than the OHV I6s in Opel large cars, found its way into this old girl. It seems like most of these things were used as pumper trucks, and would have a pump fitted up front a la a Warn winch. If anyone has stumbled across a magic resource for information on these things, let me know.

It's literally on my block, out in the beautiful, not sunny Sunset. I walked by it every day for a couple of weeks, always trying to remind myself to borrow a camera and go out and shoot it. I keep cursing the fact that I don't actually own a nice digital camera because I see amazing things like this all the time here in the city. I saw a Fiat 850 Spyder the other day and rued the pitiful, 0.000000000002 megapixel camera on my ancient Motorola Razor. Anyhow, I'll keep my eyes open and a borrowed camera in my pocket, and keep 'em coming.

While you guys were publishing some amazing DOTS finds on the site on Sunday, I had my own 'slam on the brakes-where's my camera?' moment.

I was driving through a village in West Oxfordshire, about 80 miles outside of London, when it caught my eye.

The off road parking appeared to be to take advantage of the shade but it could be down to lack of space on the drive due to presence of a 996 Targa, Bentley Conti GT and an E61 M5 estate.

It looks like a legit Carrera RS, probably the Touring model though I'm not positive. The paint finish was really amazing and the whole car was in remarkable condition. The UK vehicle registration database has it listed as a 1973 MY car but was first registered in the UK in April this year, so must be an import.

I found these Jeeps while out for a walk recently and figured they're likely old enough for DOTS. They were parked about a block away from where I shot that Mercedes 250c a couple of months ago so I expect Danio will recognize the neighbourhood. At first I thought they were both CJ7s as the green one is clearly labelled, but on closer inspection the shape of the door frame seems to indicate that the Levi's edition Wrangler is a CJ5. Your guess is probably better than mine as far as model year goes, I had enough trouble figuring out that they were two different models.

As an added bonus there are two extra shots of an NSX I ran into with my film camera. No need to run them if you don't want to, but after a look around on Autotrader I was surprised to find that the NSX is finally old enough to be (almost) affordable, if still a couple of years away from being good LeMons fodder.

Within the same block as the 1959 Desoto, I discovered this 1967 Plymouth Fury III parked on the same side. Unfortunately there wasn't a drunken stinky man around this time to let me know if this Fury was going Commando as indicated or not. Needless to say, she's looking pretty good against the curbstone.

This is one of two beauties that are within a block of each other, parked on a main artery in downtown Toronto!
First up, I found what I believe to be a 1959 Desoto Fireflite four door. While taking the pictures at 10:30 a.m., a guy three sheets to the wind stumbles out of the house it's parked in front of, and although he's not the owner, he tells me that he knows the owner and says the car has not been not restored! She's beauty marked with some rust here and there, but aside from that she looks pretty solid for an almost 50 year old automobile. Drunk guy said she's parked there every day so he can watch it for the owner. Yeah, when he's not passed out on the floor! It's the little things on this car that catch my eye, the mirrors, emblems, tail lamps, even the hub caps all have a certain attention to detail modern cars are devoid of, and that's what makes something like this car special.

Maybe you could use this Citroën DS from Toronto for your DOTS. My girlfriend had just graduated from university, and somehow I got put in charge of taking pictures. Although her family is now wondering why their camera has pictures of her graduating interrupted by pictures of a weird French contraption, but I couldn't help myself. This was by far the most exciting part of the whole ceremony. It rained later that day, and I was wondering to myself how well that canvas roof held up against the weather.

I can't say for sure that this is a North American version, but according to the picture at the Citroën club it seems right given the hub caps, grille and bumper. And since they were virtually unchanged the whole time they were imported, it's most likely from the 60s, unless it's an import, at which point it could be of almost any vintage from anywhere in the world. Enjoy!

Thought I'd share shots of the sweet beast parked outside my workplace today. I took a whole whack of photos, but the cameraphone seems to have trouble when taking shots into the sun. Or towards the sun. Or facing west. Or during daylight, darkness, movement, moments of happiness, sadness, while smoking, while drinking, while breathing... you get the idea.

So to compensate for only supplying two mediocre shots, I included a shot of an absolutely beautiful old Saab that bumbled past us in Vancouver. I know, who cares... but the point is, this was in the middle of shooting a scene of Smallville. (If you notice in the background, there are movie-car definitely-not-RCMP-standard-issue Charger police cars as part of the scene.) The roads are blocked, the building has been redressed for Luthorcorp, the cameras are rolling.... and in the middle of it all, this Saab goes around the roadblocks and right into the camera's way. "CUT!" Nobody seemed to mind, because it sounded like it was brand new, and looked like it drove that way too. Reeeeespect.

And now it's time to listen to a tune from north of the border!



Our friends from Texas do a good version as well:

Attached is a Truck I found in a Canadian Tire parking lot in Oakville Ontario, Canada while I was on lunch getting a
fan belt for my car. I Had to take a picture of it with my cell phone. The Chinese writing caught my eye and the fact
that it looks like it came out of an old Jackie Chan movie, With bad dubbing and all.

Didn't want to get to close just in case it really was Jackie Chan's truck and he might kick my ass for laughing at
it... Never know.. haha

Gotta love the welded on hand made.... cow catcher on the front? WTF is that about?

Thanks for posting my pictures of the Datsun 710. Attached are the long promised pictures of Jim Rockford's Firebird.

This is a 77 or a 78, I don't know which, but I know where Angel hid Jim's car!

The car is in New Westminster, BC in the Queens Park area, a neighbourhood of Victorian era heritage homes.

My fiance and I were cruising along I-95 in Southern Rhode Island this past weekend. I was suffering from a bit of a headache at the time, and felt a bit off. Up ahead, I saw the rear-end of a car that just didn't look right. It looked vaguely like a Saturn (with good reason) but the badge just wasn't right. I actually shook my head a little, and thought that I must be seeing things. The only thing that computed in my brain was a griffin. After I got done spitting and sputtering, my fiance finally got it out of me that I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was in fact a Vauxhall Tigra. I couldn't believe it...just what on earth is a Vauxhall doing in Rhode Island, with Connecticut plates on it?

I saw it twice in as many days; the second time I went and got my camera. Looks like a former Air Force truck (Dept. of Defense sticker 1979), maybe from a base in the Pacific somewhere. With those big 16" wheels and tires, it looks just like a cute little toy. I want it.

Paul has also sent in some nice shots of his personal '66 Ford pickup:

I washed the old Ford for the first time in five years (with a pot-scrubber), and thought I'd send you some pics. I bought this cast-iron beast 21 years ago for $500 to haul stuff to the dump, and that's where it spent this morning. My approach all these years has been to do the very least amount necessary to keep it running, and it still runs like a champ. It has the original 240 CID six that churns out 129 net hp at 3900 rpm. When the three-speed started popping out of gear, I replaced it with a Warner T-85 3-speed with overdrive. The Hurst floor shifter was already there when I bought it.

The Overdrive is set up to engage manually, allows clutch-less shifts, and yields 5 nicely-spaced gears (1 high and 2 low are too close together). Cruising at 65, the engine turns 1800 rpm. It happily rolls down the highway at eighty, if you don't mind the quarter-turn play in the manual steering and the pathetic little un-assisted drum brakes. Easy driving yields up to 20 mpg.

I use the truck exclusively to haul heavy loads. The "half-tonner" F-100 is rated to carry 1200 lbs. I consistently overload it. At the quarry, I once weighed out with a 3500 lb load, which happens to be what the tuck weighs empty. It was riding on all the axle bumper-stops, a terrific low-rider imitation. I've pulled Bobcat excavators on dual axle trailers (7,000 lbs total), but I have to be careful to pick a route where I won't have to stop on an incline, otherwise the lack of a granny low gear means a smoking clutch.

Any thoughts of a newer truck are erased when I see how high their beds are, literally twice as high as mine. But then it seems pick-ups only haul trailers now days with loads in them. I plan to keep working the Ford indefinitely, to see which one of us gives up first. If anyone is still interested, my write-up is here.

Spotted a Citroën D Special when I was walking around a restaurant in Deltaville, VA. I saw it randomly and there was a nice blue Citroën sitting in an alley, unrestored. The NASA bumper sticker is interesting too.

Just a regular old car/truck crazy guy. I spotted the attached Balboa in Daytona Beach today, parked on the street, outside a condo complex.I thought you would enjoy these.

This fine specimen of droptop Plymouth was captured in an area of Costa Mesa, CA that houses a veritable treasure trove of vehicles guaranteed to make the dragon in your life have a love explosion in his or her pants. I'll be submitting more of this neighborhood's inhabitants for tha Jalop's collective...er, "viewing pleasure" over the coming weeks, including one vehicle that may very well be the most Jalopnik in all of Orange County (and no, it's not a camino).
Until the next one comes along, please enjoy this golden chariot hailing from a time when men were men, smoking in front of the kids was kosher, Chrysler needed a brand below Dodge, and "Commando" had yet to become the title of one of the Governator's most quoted movies.

Tomsk

... and, if the power of the Escort proves too formidable, maybe I
could find one of these for next year's LeMons.

This was in Silverlake, between the worksite for the racecar and my house. At first glance it seems like a cartoon car made flesh (or fiberglass). Upon closer inspection, it seems to be like an American Reliant Robin, but smaller, flimsier, and electricer. Made in Long Beach, CA! I'm guessing somewhere from the late 60s-early 70s. Lots of off-the shelf parts (trailer/jeep taillights, golf cart bits, maybe even shopping cart hardware.)

Anyway, seems like fun to me.

I suppose it doesn't really count since I found this one out on delivery (I put in appliances for Sears), but here's a rare one for Placerville, CA, let alone anywhere: Nissan Sunny/Datsun 1000. Last registered in 1997, so it was running not too long ago, too.

If there was ever a For Sale Down On The Street (Oakland Edition) feature, I'd nominate this car: A 1956 Mercedes 180, which has spent the past few weeks parked dangling its "For Sale" sign around upper parts of Broadway in Oakland. It looks really clean inside & out, and the UC Berkeley Central Campus sticker (these pull rank over regular student / faculty stickers) serves to reinforce stereotypes about kinds of tweedy people who own these cars in the East Bay. And no, this isn't some elaborate advertising scheme — I have no affiliation to this car nor its owner!
See you around the wrecking yards,
supercarnitas

Now let's hear something from one of Oakland's best rappers... and I'm sure as hell not talking about MC Hammer here:

Speaking of Avantis, been meaning to send these shots for a while. I snapped this rather sad Avanti at the Leisure World (actually it's called Laguna Woods Village these days) retirement community near Laguna Hills, CA. Not sure what vintage it is — seemingly it's from the post-Blake era — but it sure doesn't have the style of the Stude or Avanti II versions. Whatever vintage it is, it does seem to use some "borrowed" GM components. Isn't that a side mirror from a C4 Corvette?

This car doesn't seem to get driven much. Every time I've seen it, it's been parked in the same place, just baking in the SoCal sun.

The third brakelight would imply that it is a 1986 or newer model:

The ground effects of this later-model body make the car look bloated. And the original curvaceous "coke bottle" lines have been toned down compared to earlier models:

Alloy wheel is reminscent of those on an early C4 Corvette...

And the instrument panel looks like it was taken from a 1976 Camaro

Saw this on the way home from the gym yesterday... which is pretty remarkable. Not the car, the fact that I went to the gym for the first time in 3 months and didn't pass out on the treadmill.

Thanks, ß®@ƒƒ! Now let's listen to a catchy little tune from our favorite HB band:

Spotted this "lifeguard truck" yellow little guy a few weeks ago in Costa Mesa, CA, right by my office. I didn't get a chance to grab a pic, but I saw it again yesterday, sans the car cover that thwarted me last time. The owner has a Exige as his daily driver... he definitely doesn't mess around. Any idea how he gets away with a british plate in the OC? Thanks!

VeeArrrSix

Last week while driving through my old neighborhood in Anaheim, CA, I saw this parked over in an industrial parking lot. Yes I know it's cheating but given the expiration date of the plate this car has not moved in a while (Expired in 94). It looks factory but I have been having a hard time finding an example online to verify. Anyways, onto what it is... THis appears to be an 84ish Holden Stateman Caprice. Basically a Aussieamino on US soil. This one appears to be pretty well optioned for a "truck" of its vintage but that just makes it a little bit cooler.

First up is what appears to be a '40 Ford Mercury with a towbar semi-permanently attached. It looks like it runs under its own power, so perhaps it lives behind a giant RV most of the time; bet that makes an impression at the campground! The chainsaw manual on the front seat is an interesting touch.


Now here's a pack of three Ford products- technically, two Fords and a Lincoln- that live together in EJacobs' neighborhood. Looks like we've got a '68 Fairlane 500, a '53 Ford, and a '77 Lincoln Continental Mark V coupe. Fords from three different decades, and virtually no parts interchangeability!


Last up are some photos of a matched set of three Fairlane 500s, clearly owned by the same person. It seems to be a Denver tradition to own three similar old cars and park them on the street, and the owner of these Fairlanes might well have more of them stashed in the garage and/or the back yard. I believe we're looking at two '65s and a '67, two coupes and a sedan. The rough-looking '65 in the middle is clearly the hot rod of the trio, with traction bars, dual exhaust, the half-Cragar treatment, and a floor-shift manual transmission. It's got 289 emblems, but there's no telling what's really under the hood; let's hope it's a 427!

This was found in the Western Addtion, on Lyon I think it was. Looked like they used old bowling lane or basketball court wood flooring for the majority of the constuction. It was covered in a layer of thin fiberglass in an effort to water proof it....??? I took 2 fotos at different times of day. I particularly liked the little wagon doors in the rear with small round windows!

This car parks in Irvine, CA. I don't think it's a daily driver, but it does move a bit. The pink paint is very faded, but Also, here's a cute little Chevy van and the GMC Suburban-type that I mentioned. The GMC is my favorite, especially with its LAUSD vintage. These are both in the Irvine Groves neighborhood. The GMC always parks at the front and the Chevy is always on the east side at the back.

It's a Mercedes W210 (we're guessing it's a 2002 vintage, but can't really be sure) E-Class wagon, most likely an E320 which we spotted in the Principality about three weeks ago. As if that weren't enough, it's been painted a wonderful shade of desert camo, and the venerable three-pointed star has been replaced with a reticle. The identity of this car's owner is as yet unknown, but since it belongs to a Monegasque, I think we can rule out Dick Cheney (although we did people moving a man-sized vault into one of the buildings, so it's not completely impossible). Our best (and completely baseless/unsubstantiated/wildly accusatory) guess: maybe it's Max Mosley? Because when you need to carry 5 prostitutes in style, comfort, and safety, a camouflage E-Class panzer-wagen is really the only choice...

Denis

We've just discovered that our server hamsters now refuse to run on their wheels when a gallery has more than 50 images, so here's the complete set of photos in the old format:

O DOTS Guru:

I submit for your consideration a vehicle I've seen several times near the UC San Diego campus. Finally, I was able to stop and get some decent pics of it. Sorry about the interior pic, but what can you do with a camera phone and a dirty window? Not sure of the year ('61 thru '69 obviously) and definitely not restored, but very straight. I know they're rare, but two guys who I work with who are surfers and who claim to worship at the VW Bus altar (the boss still has his Euro Van) had never seen one in person. Thought you might find it interesting.

iamhoff
La Jolla, CA