Down On The Pasadena Street, 1964 Edition: How Many Cars Can You Identify?
Many years ago, I bought a yard-sale box of old 35mm slides in order to score the reusable glass slide-mounts. A few of the original images were interesting, so I hung onto them. With all the scanning of old slides and negatives I’ve been doing for the ’65 Impala Hell Project series, I’ve also been searching for interesting automotive images among the rest of my collection. This photograph from 1964 Pasadena (as in “The Little Old Lady From”, which was a hit song in ’64) contains quite a few interesting vehicles. I’m going to follow up my 1973 San Francisco Car ID Challenge with the 1964 Pasadena Car ID Challenge: what vehicles do you see in this photograph?
The slide is dated 1964 and the Tournament of Roses banners nailed the street down as Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena (yes, the very same Colorado Boulevard terrorized by the Little Old Lady in her Super Stock Dodge), so it was a simple matter of searching business names to find the exact intersection. Patti’s Grill is gone, as is Jack Shannon’s and Bill and Corky’s, but the 35er is still in full effect; this photograph was shot looking west from the intersection of West Colorado Boulevard and North Fair Oaks Avenue.
The front row of cars at the stoplight should be pretty easy, but there’s some fascinating stuff behind them. What’s that lil’ red devil behind the Beetle? And is that a huge hood scoop on the car behind the mean-looking lowered Olds? You’ll be able to see larger version of the images by clicking on the gallery thumbnails below (and waiting patiently— very patiently— for the image to load).
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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We used to call the 35'er the "dirty diver." I drove floats in the Rose Parade three times and directed the construction of an award winning float. Building a float might be the ultimate Hell Project. I also have to put in a vote for the black Plymouth. That bumper has "Christine" written all over it.
without looking at anyone else's responses, I see a '57 plymouth behind the 55 olds, and a 55 chevy behind the '62 chevy on the left. Behind the '62 Chevy on the right is a '52 Pontiac. That red thing behind the beetle, though--it looks familiar, but I can't remember what it is. I think I saw one of those either at one of the last concours d'elegance at Castle Hill (north of Boston for those not in the know) and/or at Paul Russell's shop in Essex. It may be a Ferrari, but do'nt ask me the model. And driving in front of those cars, a '61 F85.