Some days, you just ache for a bit more civilized in your civilization, you know?

Once the mandatory beer holder and ought-to-be-mandatory chain steering wheel were installed, he mentioned to me that he was thinking of using a lawn chair as a seat. Lawn chair? I happened to have something much better in my Stash-O-Useless Car Junk™: a car seat of mysterious origin that came with my 20R Sprite Hell Project.

Since I scored some near-perfect Miata seats at the junkyard a while back, this 60s-vintage seat- which the Sprite's seller suspected might be of Volvo 544 origin- was sort of a white elephant. Take it away, Jesse!

Check out that all-plumbing-fitting steering mechanism! The steering wheel has about 1/8 turn lock-to-lock, so precise inputs are recommended.

And look- Grade 8 bolts as kingpins! This machine really is all about the safety. Unfortunately, the hardware-store bearing-challenged wheels offered a bit too much rolling resistance in action, and the car tended to drag to a stop while going downhill. Wait til next year! In fact, wait a couple of weeks and you'll get to see Jesse behind the wheel of the Killer Bees MGB LeMons racer; that's right, Jesse has switched from the V8olvo to a vehicle more in keeping with the automotive philosophy of a Mini owner.

Here's a video of some of the cars in action:

[Life]

Even though I live in a parking-challenged downtown neighborhood and have maxed out my off-street parking with several cheap heaps, I really really really wanted to go over to San Francisco and buy this car, that very minute (the listing included the ominous words "MUST SELL THIS WEEKEND"). My parents bought two brand-new 1973 128 sedans when I was 6 years old, and at the time I thought they were the most awesome-sounding motor vehicles on the face of the earth. In fact, the engine noise produced by those Fiats may have been what turned me into a car freak at an early age (I choose to not dwell on the fact that both cars were completely kaput within several years and sent my parents scurrying back to Detroit iron for the next decade). Foolishly, I decided that buying a Fiat wasn't my best move, and I never called the seller.

About a week later, I spotted a very Italian-looking profile in the holding yard of the now-defunct Hayward Pick Your Part wrecking yard. Orange, plenty of surface rust, hatchback- why, it's got to be the same car! At this point, I'm really kicking myself; this super-rare Fiat is about to get picked up by a forklift and dumped on the yard, where maybe 1% of its components will be purchased prior to its final ride to The Crusher a few weeks later (and yes, that's an early Scirocco in the background, also doomed to the same fate).

The engine looked intact and the car seemed complete. Junkyard employees just laughed, in traditional junkyard-employee fashion, when I asked about buying the car before it hit the yard: "¡Ja, Ja! ¡Gringo estupido!"

Fast-forward to last weekend. I was at the All-Italian Car And Motorcycle Show and here's an orange Fiat 128 Sport Coupe that sure looks familiar. What the hell's the deal here?


It turns out that the car on Craigslist and the car at the junkyard weren't the same Fiat after all; had I been a bit more knowledgeable about the 128 hatchbacks- which, needless to say, weren't exactly hot sellers in North America- I'd have recognized that one car was a Sport Coupe, while the other was a later 3C; similar cars, but different taillights and badging. The differences might be obvious to you Yurpeans, but I hadn't seen any 128s in the wild for many years.

And, in one of those weird small-world twists, it turns out that I know the car's new owner. It's Jalopnik reader Superasiaone, of Wedginators Buick-V6-powered TR7 24 Hours Of LeMons fame. The car just needed a tune-up to become a decent driver; you can read more about its story here.

The Buick-ized TR7 is long gone and Scratchy Bottom Racing is considering making the 128 Sport Coupe into their next LeMons racer. The car got pretty rusty during its long spell sitting in a San Francisco driveway, but the mechanicals are in great shape. Cars don't get destroyed in post-Altamont LeMons racing, so we might end up seeing a caged 128 SL getting track and street time in the near future.

Meanwhile, we can assume that the poor 3P and its Scirocco neighbor have been crushed by now, no doubt packed into cubes of metal in a Guangzhou-bound container ship at this moment. Contemplate the randomness of automotive survival versus death as you enjoy these galleries:
Fiat 128 3P On Death Row


Fiat 128 SL Gets Rescued

Photo Credit: Ben Margot/AP Photo

I found the shot, all right, but I forgot all about my Island Auto Movie 1984 piece once I took a look at the rest of the photographs in the set. San Francisco native Dave Glass has been shooting cars down on the street since the late 1960s- mostly in the Bay Area, but he's hauled his camera to such places as Mexico and Louisiana as well. This is some amazing stuff, and I think I may have to buy myself a print or two from the Automobile As Landscape series. Send him an email if you're interested in any for yourself. And now, a couple of galleries:

The good news is 2008 saw a major decrease in traffic, with drivers in the 100 largest metropolitan areas dealing with a 29% decrease in congestion on average. The bad news is we're seeing it because of an increase in gas prices, which led to less driving and more carpooling, and a decrease in jobs, which led to more people sitting on the couch hoping their unemployment doesn't run out so they can afford to keep their benefits. It's a vicious circle. Much like the pain we're seeing in these community-by-community breakdowns of the most congested intersections in these 20 most congested metro areas.

1. Los Angeles	2. New York	3. Chicago	4. Dallas Fort Worth
5. Washington, D.C.	6. Houston	7. San Francisco	8. Boston
9. Seattle	10. Minneapolis-St. Paul	11. Philadelphia	12. Atlanta
13. Phoenix	14. Miami	15. San Diego	16. Denver
17. Baltimore	18. San Jose	19. Detroit	20. Riverside-San Bernardino

Though traffic does correlate to population rank, with the top four metropolitan areas also in the four worst cities for traffic, there are some anomalies. The Washington, D.C.-Arlington-Alexandria area is only the eighth most populous region in the country but is the fifth worst when it comes to traffic due to its high capacity of employment in the area and the lack of good housing stock for middle class families within "The Beltway" area.

Detroit is 11th largest in terms of population but only has the 19th worst traffic situation, primarily because of a 47% decrease in traffic year-over-year due to the economy and dramatic job loss. The collapse of the housing market hit Riverside-San Bernardino, a.k.a. the Inland Empire, hardest of all. The area saw a drop of 57% in traffic congestion, which is almost the same as the 55% drop in median home prices. While there's probably not a 1:1 ratio between the change in home values and congestion, they're likely connected.

Areas less affected by the housing market still experienced decreases in traffic, but at a lower level. For instance, home prices in Dallas remained stable and traffic congestion only decreased by 13% year-over-year, causing Dallas to move up to the fourth most congested city.

Los Angeles, New York City and Chicago are, as expected, still the worst cities for traffic in America. Los Angeles is so bad that peak hour congestion in Los Angeles is twice what it is in Chicago. The combination of a large population and low density makes L.A. even worse than the more populous New York. Compared to the Big Apple, Los Angeles also has fewer mass transit options.

Click on any of the cities above to see their current rank, population, congestion change and worst time of day for traffic. You can also view a gallery of the 100 worst intersections that fall within each city. A look at the hotspots reveal a few similar trends: intersecting highways, two-lane sections with onramps and merging lanes.

If you're reading this post it means you've actually made it home or made it to work. Congrats. There's probably someone still stuck in traffic.

[via Forbes, Google Earth]

The 105S was made from 1956 through 1959, and this one proves that a left-hand-drive version was built. Kip shot this car, plus the Beetle in Gulf Oil colors, in downtown San Francisco. And that wraps up our DOTS-O-Rama Sunday!

Well, maybe the not-so-loved Ferrari 400 would be willing to take the punishment of life in San Francisco without tearing its owner's heart out every time some piss bum hurled a spark plug through a window in order to scavenge 77 cents from the glovebox. Naters4 took these blurry-but-serviceable cellphone shots for us a few months back:

I biked past this 400 GT in Cole Valley and had to stop despite the fact that the incline of the hill meant I may never start again. Don't know the year, but it was in great condition. Sorry the quality sucks, I just had my phone.
Enjoy!

I don't have my reference guides handy, so I can't ID the 20s or 30s sedan used as the basis for this street rod. It's definitely not the kind of thing you see very often parked on the street!

Found this in San Francisco (not very far from Alameda) at the corner of Fillmore and Laussat...I don't even know what it is. Sorry about the poor quality...my camera's not very good at night.

Steve was heading to the leathery action at the last Folsom Street Fair when he came across this very solid-looking Goddess:

I'm a car nut, nothing on your caliber, but I spotted this DS21 on the way down to the Folsom Street Fair yesterday! It was parked @ SF City Hall.

I can't place the year, but it's a 1965-1970? I realize a ton of these were produced in Europe, and I see some interesting cars around the city, but first time I've seen a DS! A few people were coming up asking "WHAT IS THIS?!?!?!" while I was photographing it. Always interesting to see their faces when I excitedly said, "Citroen! It's French!"

Obviously not a show piece, seems to get regular use, well, "regular" as a Citroen of this era could get...

I've never been good at figuring out 510 model years, but the marker lights and bumpers seem to indicate early 70s vintage.

Come back in an hour for more interesting iron parked down on the San Francisco street!

Wimbles knows how to work a camera, took the time to ID all the vehicles he shot, and even cropped/resized them to the gallery-friendly 1280-pixel width we like best. This is the very best way to send in DOTSBE photos. I'll let Wimbles describe what he's found:

I'm relatively new to Jalopnik but I've always been interested in your Down on the Street series. I'm a college student going to school in San Francisco and I see a lot of cool old cars parked on the streets when I'm in town. Lately I've been photographing more and more of them in DOTS style and I figured I'd give it a shot trying to submit some for DOTSBE.

For starters, here's a 1973 Ford Torino sedan. This is probably the first one I've ever actually noticed on the street and caught my eye because I'm used to seeing the arguably better-looking Gran Torinos. Fancy seeing a plain blue, beat-up standard '73 Torino in a place as progressive as San Francisco! It was seen parked on Telegraph Hill.

I'm not sure about the year of the Dodge A-100 Tradesman, but it looks to be approximately a 1968 model judging by the style of badging and the reflectors on the doors. I could be wrong. Until I saw this one, I wasn't aware that the Tradesman name was used prior to the B-Series vans of the '70s. It appears to be in generally good condition for its age, though it has some worrisome rust on the passenger side doors. It was seen parked on Telegraph Hill near COIT Tower.
This van has been seen on DOTSBE before, but it was part of a series of street parking profile shots by Martin Taylor.

Continuing the Mopar series is a 1965 Plymouth Barracuda. I see this car parked and driving every so often and have had two opportunities to photograph it (evident from the markedly different weather in the various pictures). It is equipped with the 273CI Commando V8. It was photographed in the Financial District. Interestingly enough, I have seen another Barracuda (brown, '67-69) parked on this same street in the past and have gotten a couple of snapshots of it, but nothing DOTS-worthy.

Next up for this run is a 1979 Plymouth Sapporo which lives just north of Alamo Square. I have seen this car driving once. I actually stumbled upon its home by sheer coincidence while returning from a long walk to the Panhandle in a fruitless attempt to grab some DOTS photos of the Porsche 356 and Volkswagen Transporter Syncro 4WD extended cab utility body pickup I had briefly snapped on a previous date.

Lastly, we have a very interesting find. A 2002-05 JDM Daihatsu Move Custom, probably fresh off the boat in America as it has no plates. But they wasted no time in decking this little kei car out inside with everything kawai they could find. It has a sticker on the rear hatch from Uemuru Motor, which is apparently an auto wholesaler in Callao, Peru.

VR6John caught this Ranchero- which I'm pretty sure is a '63 (I'm at Murilee Martin Field HQ in Denver at the moment, so I don't have my reference library handy) over the summer, and it's time everyone got a chance to check it out. Love the 260 emblems! Here's what VR6John has to say:

hey Murilee...

saw this ranchero outside my office in SF...might be good for a DOTS-SF

comes with a dog too...this is down the street from the the little italian job you nabbed.

Akier found this 80s Vixen 21 TD (more info on this futuristic RV may be found at the Vixen Owner's Association site) in San Francisco, then added some shots of an extremely evil Burning Man-style early-70s Chrysler product he found across the bay in Oakland. Here's what he has to say about these fine street-parked machines:

Hey Murilee! I saw a Vixen today. At first I thought I'd jumped 400 years (light-years?) into the future, but then I realized it was just an RV, albeit one with a DeLorean connection and a rear-mounted BMW diesel motor! Cool huh? This one was in Cole Valley.

And I was in my stomping grounds, Temescal, when I saw this Mopar Deathwagen on the street. Rust, primer, and Roland electronics combine to form the world's most prototypical Burning-Man-pseudo-fascist-Mad-Max-reject-rolling-art-concept. Adina of Adina's Car World, the shop it was parked at, claimed "the flamethrowers were currently inoperative." Thank the maker!

Sorry for the craptacular photo quality. I think my iPhone has a congenital lens defect. Enjoy!

And, thanks to our all-knowing commenters, it turns out that the Mopar Deathwagon is famous, having appeared on the cover of Information Society's 1990 album, Hack:

I've got well over 100 sets of Down On The Street Bonus Edition photos, sent in by readers all over the world, and the ones from San Francisco outnumber those from any other city. Today we're going to reduce the backlog a bit, with a San Francisco edition of DOTS-O-Rama Sunday. In honor of the V6-powered Opular Dependence Opel GT, we'll start off with this '71 Opel GT, photographed by V6-powered LeMons TR7-driving Superasiaone. Come back later for more DOTS-O-Rama action!