The LA Auto Show this year was filled with pansy cars for the weak: an Alfa Romeo crossover and a 911 race car with the engine in the middle. But for truly real Los Angeles realness, this was the one.
We spotted this car down the block from the official Jalopnik AirBnB. Let nobody say we’ve gone Hollywood.
As you can see it’s an end-of-the-Clinton-years Chrysler 300M, crashed, smashed, curbed, wheels stolen, windows smashed and branded with the warning “snitch.”
The guys across the street who owned the ‘70s Ford Maverick laughed about it and said the car had been there for about two months. Cops drive by pretty regularly but nobody bothers it.
Another old Polish guy who moved into the neighborhood about 30 years ago (he said he fled his country back in ‘75, left Brooklyn some years later) said the guy was lucky he only had his car trashed. “At least he didn’t get a bullet,” he offered.
This little neighborhood (not quite Koreatown, I don’t think) used to see shootings every week, the guy explained, about 20-25 years ago. It’s cleaned up since they put the new school in down the way, but there are still extremely real signs of extreme realness to be found.
Do not fuck with LA.