There Is No Substitute For The Island That Rust Forgot
I photographed and posted a total of 578 old cars and trucks on the streets of Alameda, California, for the Down On The Street series before I moved to Denver and then left Jalopnik. Now I’m back in California for a LeMons race, and Alameda has been restocked with new examples of classic street-parked iron.
It’s hard not to love a car that looked like an antique when it was new; the prewar-looking 544 was built well into the 1960s (this example appears to be one of the later models, if we are to judge by the B18 emblem on the trunk lid). It’s beat up and grimy, but it’s still on the street!
The San Francisco Bay Area is one of the continent’s hotbeds of Citroënism, but this one (parked just a few blocks from the Volvo) is the first street-parked 2CV I’ve ever seen on the Island That Rust Forgot. Sure, I’ve shot a Traction-Avant, a couple of Goddesses, and even a GS, but it always irked me that I couldn’t find an example of the most iconic Citroën of all time. Finally!
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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Thanks for the tip...I will have to see if I can find some pics to see if they match with my memory.
New York is pretty lame when it comes to numerous nice cars. bit Colorado is better, and though I have never been to California the place looks great.