1974 Chevrolet Impala [Down On The Street]

Welcome to Down On The Street, where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Today's car is a great big moldering slab-o-Malaise iron, which I found parked- strangely enough- on Bay Farm Island, a part of the city built up with new, garage-equipped tract homes and thus not a great hunting ground for vintage street-parked iron (though BFI does have some pretty good vintage BMWs).

What is a great gas-swilling old survivor like this doing serving regular street duty in a neighborhood like this? Is the original owner a visiting relative? Or maybe the rebellious teenage son of the family feels more comfortable driving in the kind of car appropriate to a Bayonne water-heater salesman in 1976 than he would in the usual 10-year-old Corolla. There's just no telling.


It's pretty beat, with the usual rear-window-area rot you get on GM cars after a few decades of rainy Bay Area winters, but it's still doing its job. With no engine-displacement emblems, we must assume it shipped from the factory (probably the Southgate plant in Southern California, if it's a California native) with a plain ol' 350 or 400 under the hood. By now, though, it could have anything from a 262 to a 454, depending on what was available in the junkyard when the previous engine gave up.

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1956 Lincoln Continental [Down On The Street]

Welcome to Down On The Street, where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. It appears that we have a new Ultimate DOTS Neighborhood in Alameda, one that's provided us with the '67 Imperial, the '69 Volvo P1800, the '67 Olds Vista Cruiser, the '70 Lincoln Mark III, plus several cars you haven't seen yet… all in a one-block area! Some are clearly owned by the same lover of old iron, but the whole neighborhood seems to be infected by the glorious madness of vintage machinery.

This is either a 1956 or 1957 model; I can't tell the difference, so I flipped a coin to choose. You Lincoln experts can save the day by pointing out what makes it one or the other. Either way, it's pretty solid and it runs; since it's too nice for rat-rod-ization, my guess is that it's going to go the restoration route.


Check out this fine trunk ornament. Knights! Coats of arms! Somehow, this schtick wasn't lame in the 50s, very much unlike the Broughamized cheeze Detroit pasted on their cars in the 60s and 70s. Or was it always cheeze?


And the vents behind the rear quarter windows- what's the deal here? They look functional, but for what? Rear-mounted air-conditioning unit? Early attempt at flow-through ventilation? Rear brake cooling for total hoons?

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1969 Mercury Cougar [Down On The Street]

Welcome to Down On The Street, where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. We've seen a few Alameda Cougars so far, including this '67 (which later turned up in the wrecking yard), this '68, this '73, and this '75. Now we're going to look at a first-gen Cougar that's lived in the same neighborhood since I was a kid.

It's got a very 1970s two-tone paint job, which has taken some punishment from the California sun, but it still looks pretty good and it gets its owner to work every day. This car may be a '68, but my DOTS Sense tells me it's a '69; I'm not enough of a Cougar expert to distinguish a '68 from a '69, so you experts can correct me if I've made a mistake.


Some 60s cars look best with the factory wheels and hubcaps, but I think this car has the exact right wheels right now. You think both flip-up headlights still work?

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