Old Cars in Fremont

The Fremont neighborhood in Seattle has long since ceased to be affordable for ordinary human beings, but it retains some of its quirky character in the form of a lot of old cars and trucks.

This 1949 Ford F-1 has been nicely restored. That's a pretty nice chrome grill for a working pickup from this era.

 

 

The mid-80s Chevy El Camino, still a fairly common sight on the west coast.

 

This 1976 Datsun 280Z was the first car in the series with fuel-injection. It was way ahead of the dinosaurs Detroit was offering at the time.

 

1987 Dodge Ram. Far less common that the old Ford and Chevy trucks you see on every block here.

 

1980 Toyota Celica. One of the few cars from that era that is hard to kill.

 

And finally, right in front of the Ford F-1, quite a contrast: A 1990 Mercedes 560 SEC. This car cost around $85,000 new. That would be over $200,000 in 2024 dollars.

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1959 Chevrolet Parkwood and friends

The 1959 Chevy is a car that collectors either love or hate, with its distinctive "eyebrows" over the headlights and teardrop taillights. Personally, I think it's the ugliest car Chevy ever made. Few wagons of this era survived, especially as daily drivers like this one.

This car's owner also has a 1951 Chevy which may or may not be drivable. Next door to these cars is a very smart-looking 1961 Chevy C10 pickup that also appears to be an unrestored survivor. And just a couple of doors down is a GMC, possibly also a 1961. Too bad it's wrecked; the frame is probably too messed up for restoration.

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1957 Chevrolet 3200 Pickup Truck

This truck looks like it's trying to tell me stories about 66 years of traveling the pacific northwest. The 3200 was the long-bed model. I understand that the length and width of the beds on Chevy trucks stayed the same for 30 years. Note that the grill is painted, not chrome. That was optional from the factory, I assume it was slightly cheaper. This was the last year before they went to four headlights.

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1955 Chevrolet Pickup Truck

Known as the 3100 and as the Task Force, this was GM's first new pickup since 1947. V-8 engine, 12-volt electrical system and all kinds of other new stuff. Note the wrap-around glass on the front and the back of the cab; GM was very proud of being the king of glass technology. This truck was introduced in March of 1955; for the first half of the model year, Chevy and GMC were still selling the old Chevrolet Advance-Design Series truck.

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1956 Chevrolet Bel Air

66 years on the road and counting. Out here in the land that rust forgot, it's not surprising to see a car like this used at a daily driver. I'm always fascinated by time capsule cars like this that have never been restored.

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Where the 70s Survived: 1978 Chevy Van

It's hard to wrap your mind around American culture of the 1970s. What to say about the forgotten phenomenon of the custom van?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From flashbak.com: "There were no minivans in the 1970s.  This was a time before the van had been tamed, before it had been neutered into the soccer-mom machine that it is today.  In the 1970s, vans didn’t carry spoiled kids drinking juice-boxes and watching Spongebob…. quite the contrary.  Vans were basically a bedroom on wheels.  No Spongebob, no juice boxes, no trips to organized sporting events in the suburbs…. just lots of sex and recreational drug use.  You might say the 1970s full size van was the crazy uncle of the modern minivan – the uncle that lived dangerously in the 70s, then flamed out at decade’s end.

In the 1970s, many van owners took their shaggin’ wagons seriously and tricked them out to the limit: Big shiny sidepipes with mellow sound, plush interior carpeting for maximum fornication, duals to amp up the horsepower,…. and, perhaps most importantly, the artwork on the sides….

The vans of the 1970s were decorated with airbrushed psychedelic wizards, doobie smoking dragons, naked slave girls, flaming unicorns… the trippier the better.  I reiterate – this was not your mom’s minivan.  This was a place where “bad” things happen, and the designs were warning signs.  Get into the back of a van with an airbrushed Grim Reaper in a land of mushrooms and naked fairies, and you should know what your (sic) getting into."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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1968 Chevrolet C10 Pickup Truck

 This post is a reader submission, and not actually in Seattle. But it's my blog and I'm making an exception. Note the wood bed. My father's '77 Chevy pickup had one. Apparently they were available as late as 1987.

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1931 Chevrolet AE Independence

On this miserable smoky day in Seattle, I saw something good. This car is done up vintage hot rod style. The owner told me the engine is a '56 Buick V-8.

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1965 Chevrolet Impala Super Sport

The '65 Impala was a great looking car, but I feel like it was all down hill from here. After that year, the Impala kept getting bigger. (Why? This car is huge!) It also started getting a more "formal" look. By 1971, forget it - that Impala was a land yacht.
* '65 was the last year for the round tail lights.
* The Super Sport package did not automatically mean a big V-8. Some Impala SS cars have a straight 6!

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1961 Chevrolet Corvair 95 Rampside Pickup

Too many people either love or hate Chevy Corvair cars for them to ever be forgotten, but Corvair trucks and vans have mostly faded from memory. These odd vehicles got pretty good reviews from the car magazines, and copies in good condition command high prices today.

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1993 Chevrolet Lumina

General Motors was once the largest, wealthiest and most admired company in the world. What went wrong in the years leading to the company's 2009 bankruptcy? Many, many things went wrong. And those mistakes are reflected in surviving copies of GM's products.

From curbsideclassic.com: "Despite its name, the Lumina failed to bring any light to those dark years at GM when it arrived. The Lumina was a desperate effort to play catch-up with Ford’s runaway hit Taurus as well as to parry with the Camry and Accord; the result was predictably dim. It instantly joined its smaller brother Corsica as the very icons of  fleet queens, a title its W-Body successors defended right to the present. Did they have redeeming qualities? Undoubtedly; but I’m hardly the one to ask. Try Hertz."

"GM’s W-Body started out as the GM10, which got off to miserable start with the 1988 Buick Regal, Olds Cutlass Supreme and Pontiac Grand Prix coupes. The whole GM10 program was quite likely the single biggest boondoggle of the Roger Smith era; their development cost a mind-boggling $7 billion ($13 billion adjusted), and the goal was to build these cars in seven plants at 250,000 units per year per plant; in other words, a 21% share of the total US market. What were they smoking? Soon enough, GM would be fighting for a 21% market share for the whole company, never mind mid-sized cars.

The enormous sunk costs and subsequent pathetic sales meant that GM was losing some $2000 per car on these at the time the Lumina made its belated appearance for 1990. The old saw that GM lost money on its small cars because it had to build them to meet CAFE targets isn’t nearly encompassing enough. When asked by Fortune why GM10 was such a catastrophe, Smith replied, “I don’t know. It’s a mysterious thing.”(wikipedia)"

How long has it been since you've seen a mid-90s Lumina on the road? Quite a while, I'm guessing? And how long since you saw a mid-90s Toyota Camry? Probably this morning?

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1938 Chevrolet half-ton pickup

The '38 Chevy pickup was significantly updated from the '37, having been reworked by Chevy's new Art and Color Department. I've no doubt many in 1930s were surprised that work trucks had anything to do with "Art and Color".

* Man is that cab ever tiny. Hard to believe you could work the gear shift with two adults in there.
* This design would carry Chevy pickups through 1940, when they were replaced by the AK series. That design would run through mid-1947, when they were replaced with the all-new Advanced Design Series, the classic Chevy pickup everyone knows.

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1955 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible with automatic rain sensor

The Greenwood Car Show was this weekend, and here's the coolest car I saw. This all-original '55 Bel Air has every available option, including the incredibly rare automatic rain sensor for the power top. A few drops of water is all that's needed to activate it. The owner was kind enough to do a demo when I asked him about it. Scroll to the bottom for this amazing video.

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1978 Pontiac Sunbird (Chevrolet Vega). Ladies and Gentlemen, the Worst American Car Ever Made

Since I started this blog, it's been my privilege to photograph in Seattle many still-running examples of notoriously bad cars. Yes, in the Emerald City there are people whose disregard for their own personal safety and lack of self-respect is so complete that they will actually take to the streets in a Ford Pinto, Chevy Chevette, Chevy Citation, Plymouth Volaré or Cadillac Cimarron. How these cars are still in operable condition, even in a city free of road salt, is equally remarkable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I have taken snapshots of many of Detriot's most notorious bombs, I have often wondered if I would ever spot the Holy Grail of bad American cars. Would I ever see a Chevy Vega?

By 1978 the original Vega had been reworked as the Monza for Chevy, while the old Vega wagon, dating all the way back to 1971, was dumped on Pontiac. The Vega represented everything that was wrong with General Motors in 1970 and its cynical response to the challenge of small, fuel-efficient imported cars. From a Popular Mechanics article by John Pearly Huffman entitled, How the Chevy Vega Nearly Destroyed GM:

"Of course, no one car and no one moment set GM on its downward path by itself. But the Vega embodied practically everything bad that was about to consume the corporation and, decades later, send it into bankruptcy."

The Vega, "was a small car developed not by the Chevrolet Division, but by a corporate team assembled by GM's president Ed Cole during 1968. Rushed through development in only two years, the Vega was delivered to (Chevrolet President John) DeLorean and Chevrolet as a fait accompli; a nearly complete vehicle over which Chevrolet itself would have only minimal engineering and design input. It was Chevrolet's and DeLorean's job to sell it."

"(T)he lack of engineering focus and the drive to keep the price low resulted in a car with notoriously thin sheetmetal only haphazardly covered in anti-rust primer. Soon the Vega was earning a reputation as a rust-prone bucket. It wasn't uncommon for rusted Vega front fenders to need replacing after only one or two seasons driving in the salted slop of northeastern winters. Even in states like California or Arizona where rust was almost unknown, Vega owners would see corrosion eating away at their cars.

The engine also had a barely adequate cooling system that combined with the delicate engine block for horrible results. When the engine got hot, which wasn't uncommon, the cylinders distorted and the piston rings wore off the exposed silica that was meant to provide a tough wall surface. Then, at best, the cars burned more oil. At worst, the distortion compromised the head gasket, caused the coolant to leak and eventually killed the engine."

"Since the Vega sold so strongly (almost 2 million were built before it left production after 1977), the result was that literally hundreds of thousands of buyers were having awful experiences with the car. Some were merely disappointed. Many were incensed. And a lot of them felt betrayed by General Motors, Chevrolet and the American auto industry as a whole. Surely, those customers were then far more willing to consider the Japanese alternatives that were starting to arrive."

Final note: This car does not have the notorious Vega engine; that's probably why it's still running. Instead it has Pontiac's 4-cylinder. While that motor has little going for it, at least it didn't blow up after just a few thousand miles.

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1952 Chevrolet Suburban

Available since 1935, the Suburban is the longest-running automobile model of all time.

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