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newVideoPlayer("/85ChrysLeBaron-Ricardo_494.flv", 506, 423,""); What we really want to know here is: does "available leather-fitted cabin" mean the '85 LeBaron GTS has Soft Corinthian Leather ? Or did you actually get basketball leather?
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Welcome to Project Car Hell , where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! Hard times is a-comin', and it's time to prepare for life on the move! The global economic meltdown doesn't mean you have to take a break from Hell Projects. In fact, it's more important than ever that you break out your Hell Project skills in order to give you and your'n an edge when it comes time to hit the road in search of work, handouts, escape from rampaging urban mobs, etc… and that means building a vehicle that can haul you, your loved ones, and a large percentage of your personal possessions around the land. We're talking pots and pans, crates of squawking chickens, and mattresses strapped to the outside of the vehicle here, with maybe Grandma lashing down the spare engine with bungee cords as you horse-trade some crafty yokel for a sack of cornmeal to feed your white liquor still. Sure, you could just buy a diesel Econoline...
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Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Remember when four-door hatch versions of small Japanese cars were commonplace? As we now know, the 80s were the last gasp for lengthened, four-door hatchback versions of Japanese subcompacts; once the minivans and SUVs took charge, the cold-eyed accountants at Toyota knew they wouldn't be making these things in quantity for much longer. In this case we've got a four-door hatch Corolla, fairly well beat up but still getting the groceries. Chevrolet sold a badge-engineered version of this car, built about 25 miles south of here and given the Nova name. You could also get a Fremont- built Corolla FX in the mid-to-late 80s. galleryPost('DOTS85CorollaWagon', 13, '1985 Toyota Corolla Station Wagon Down On The Alameda Street'); First 400 DOTS Vehicles • DOTS FAQ
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Welcome to Project Car Hell , where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! Yesterday, we saw a 6.9 Benz face defeat for the first time in Project Car Hell history, a feat that generally requires unholy intervention by the Prince Of Darkness himself, or at least the presence of Citroën badges. We've had a run of affordable Hell Projects lately, and that's fine… but sometimes we need to mainline some optimism and look at spending a few more bucks at the gateway to Gearhead Gehenna. We've had some PCH Lambos before, including a Diablo , another Diablo , an Urraco , an Espada , and another Espada. But we've never had the most Lamborghini-ish Lamborghini of them all, the ridiculously awesome Countach . Sure sure, the Countach would get eaten up by a lot of not-quite-supercar factory hot rods these days, but you still need one! The problem is finding one that's an affordable project, which isn't easy… but we've...
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newVideoPlayer("/85_Corvette_476.flv", 506, 423,""); We may laugh at the early C4 Corvette these days, since most of the ones you see now are beat-to-hell heaps adorned with custom gear purchased from Manny, Moe, and Jack. Back in the mid-80s, however, it was quite the bang-for-buck deal, selling for $25K- half the cost of the Porsche 928S- and outhandling some of Europe's hottest machinery. OK, fine, the build quality wasn't so great and the engine only made 230 horsepower and the styling screamed "small-time coke dealer," but it would eat up a Ferrari on the race track!
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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 our share of Porsches in this series, mostly 911s and 912s but with a handful of water-cooled jobs thrown in. So far I've been unable to find any 924s, but today we'll add another 9 4 4 to the lone '87 we've already got. I found this '85 parked on the same block as the '80 Volvo 244 and just around the corner from the silver '67 Porsche 912 . It's plenty rough, with sun-bleached paint and lots of dents, and it never seems to move from this spot. Did the dreaded $1,000 timing belt let go? Is it unable to pass the smog test? The tags expire on Halloween, so action will need to be taken soon. This was the most affordable Porsche you could get in 1985, its $21,440 price tag less than half the size of the 928's and ten grand lower than the cheapest 911. That still wasn't cheap; you could have bought...
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newVideoPlayer("/83_Camaro_476.flv", 506, 423,""); Whether you were grabbing a gear with the 190-horse IROC- oh, wait, you couldn't get the manual transmission with the Tuned Port Injection 305- or experiencing the joys of leaky rubber seals with your Berlinetta's T-tops, the 1985 Camaro let you live it! The glitchy VHS recording just makes this ad that much more Eighties, we think.
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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 had a real Mazda shortage around these parts, probably because the early rotaries tended to blow out the apex seals and/or suck gas and thus didn't weather the decades quite as well as their piston-engine competition. There's been an '81 RX-7 (plus one non-Wankel '82 Mazda ) and that's been it until today. I've decided to go deeper into the 80s to enable more RX-7s to qualify for this series, because they were great cars on the street (and on the racetrack ) and deserve our respect. Sure, it was a nightmare to make the Wankel pass America's ever-toughening smog standards (and let's not even mention the complexity of the later RX-7 Turbo's emissions gear), but the power-to-weight of that little engine was nuts . The '85 GSL weighed a mere 2,345 pounds and went pretty well with 101 horses. However, the...
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Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. With all the cool cars and trucks we've seen in this series, it may come as a shock to some that the first-ever DOTS car- that is, the first use of "Down On The Street" as the name- was this Cadillac Cimarron d'Oro , shot with a seriously crappy cellphone camera. Since that time, I've been packing better photographic hardware and keeping an eye open for another Cimarron… and now I've got one! What's the difference between the '85 Chevy Cavalier and the '85 Cadillac Cimarron? Some emblems, some leather… oh, and an extra $7,045- more than twice the cost of the $6,477 Cavalier (though the $560 cost of the optional V6 pushed the Chevy's price up to just about exactly half that of the Cad). The General's management, already reeling from relentless Japanese competition, the Fiero fiasco, and a bad case of Cerebral...
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newVideoPlayer("/85_Celebrity_Urinesport_476.flv", 506, 423,""); Perhaps it's because every Celebrity ever made looked like it had 200,000 rough miles on the clock by the end of its second year on the road- fading plastic, trim panels a-dangling, and so on, or maybe it's the acre upon acre of clapped-out examples you see clogging up the GM section at every junkyard in the country. Either way, it seems impossible to picture the '85 Celebrity Eurosport as a new car , much less one that carried an air of class and sophistication.
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We saw an AE86 Toyota with Sprinter badging earlier in this series, and now I've found one with a single Trueno emblem just a few blocks away. This '85 seems to have had the US-spec front bumper replaced with a JDM assembly, but I'm pretty sure this car was originally sold in the US. It's always good to see an AE86 still driving, since most of these things have been thoroughly hooned by two generations of leadfooted import fanatics and they're getting mighty tough to find. It's been lowered a bit and sports the obligatory large exhaust tip, but overall it looks quite intact. Perhaps it spent the first 20 or so years of its life as a sedate daily driver. I saw quite a few of these emblems at the Motoring J Style show a month ago. Hey, do you think we'll start seeing Echos with Platz emblems? Avalons with Pronard badging? Yes, that's a NorCal Drift Academy T-shirt being used as a seat cover; let's hope the owner of this car keeps the body in one piece and...
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newVideoPlayer("/85_Mustang_Breakdance_476.flv", 506, 423,""); So you think the Cocaine Factory '85 Duster Ad was the most Eighties car ad you've ever seen? Maybe so, but you're tapping a rich vein of 80s-ness when you add some low-end moonwalking and vaguely break-dance-esque music to an ad for a Turbo Mullet Era Fox Mustang. And only $6,885... for the car with the 88-horsepower 2.3 liter four-cylinder.
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newVideoPlayer("Cyclone_Gas_Theft.flv", 506, 423,""); Some guys might be ashamed of a blurry Super 8 film showing them at age 18, siphoning gas whilst sporting dirtbag-style long hair (no, it's not a goddamn mullet), a Dark Angel T-shirt, and a '68 Mercury Cyclone with cheap mags in the back and factory hubcaps on the front... but this is Jalopnik! Here's some footage I shot for a film class; let's just say I gave up on the project because it's really hard to capture a good burnout at night on ASA 64 Super 8 movie film (it does show off some cinematic technique, with a sophisticated skateboard-as-camera-dolly shot). And, since Super 8 film is silent and we are not crooks , let's have a little Tricky Dick soundtrack to go with it! Never heard of Dark Angel, dude? Make the jump!
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Italian cars have been mighty rare in this series, so I was pleased to run across this '85 Alfa Romeo Graduate parked in the island's East End. I see this car moving under its own power on a regular basis, so it's a genuine driver (not just someone's hopeless Hell Project). We've seen an '89 Graduate already in this series, but the 1985 was the first year for the "entry-level" version of the Alfa Romeo Spider and that makes this example seem more significant. You didn't get alloy wheels or luxury goodies when you bought a Graduate in '85, but you did get a real Italian sports car for just $14,395 (two grand more than the V6-powered Fiero GT ). Which would you buy? It's in pretty decent shape for a street-parked 23-year-old Italian commuter car. Good enough shape to win our first-ever Favorite Italian DOTS car poll? Let's find out! I thought of including the Pininfarina-styled Datsun 411 and MGB-GT in the choices, but decided against it....
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newVideoPlayer("85_Fiero_V6_476.flv", 506, 423,""); I had my very first college spring break in 1985, just like the guy in this ad... only I didn't have the opportunity to catch a ride to Fort Lauderdale from an attractive 80s chick in a brand-new Fiero. No, my '85 spring break involved catching a ride to Tijuana in a Bondo-and-primer '66 Fairlane reeking of exhaust leaks and beer farts. I must have gone to the wrong school! This guy, on the other hand, went to a college with an all-Fiero-driving female student body, so he could afford to be picky.
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