2000: San Francisco Tow-Auction Cars Fill My Back Yard

by Murilee Martin

Published: February 2nd, 2011

2000 san francisco tow auction cars fill my back yard

Going through my old 2X2X2 35mm stereo slide pairs for posting on Cars In Depth (I’ve been messing around with twin-film-camera 3D for about 15 years now), I came across some shots of the ever-varied fleet of late-80s/early-90s Japanese subcompacts I owned during the heyday of San Francisco’s notorious City Tow car auctions.

City Tow has since been replaced by Auto Return, whose auctions are way less fun than the Wild West madness of the circa-2000 City Tow auctions. Back in those days, you’d show up to a grimy parking lot at Pier 70, eyeball a couple hundred towed vehicles in unknown condition (would the car start? were the seats packed with dirty syringes? Who knows?) for maybe 15 minutes, then get to bidding. Crowds of Hunter’s Point gang-bangers kept the auction proceedings lively, and 10-to-15-year-old Civics, Tercels, Corollas, and Sentras usually went for $100 to $300. I had a job not far from Pier 70, so I’d often drop by and risk a couple hundred bucks on, say, an ’86 CRX or ’90 Prizm. You’d pay your money, pay some sleazebag with a trunk full of car keys $35 to find a key that fit your new ride, then pay another dude with a car battery in a shopping cart 5 bucks for a jump start. I’d always bring starter fluid and a bare-bones toolbox, and I never once bought a Toyota, Honda, or Nissan that wouldn’t start (though I did once buy a Tercel wagon that had only third through fifth gears, which made climbing up the steep access road out of Pier 70 a real adventure.

That Tercel ended up being a keeper, after I swapped in a Pick-N-Pull transmission; I’d traded my previous Tercel wagon— that one a 4WD model— to a guy who worked at Alternative Tentacles, in exchange for a bunch of the album inserts of the controversial H.R. Giger artwork used in the Dead Kennedys album Frankenchrist. Hmmm… wonder if those are worth anything now? The other two cars in the top photo— a ’90 Tercel hatchback and a ’91 Nissan Sentra coupe— didn’t stick around quite as long. Still, I think the early 90s era was really the golden age of Japanese subcompacts; they all had fuel injection, got great gas mileage, and were still small.

#1980s #1986 #1986ToyotaTercel #1990 #1990ToyotaTercel #1990s #1991 #1991NissanSentra #Auctions #AutoAuctions #Toyota #Nissan #Tercel #Sentra #ToyotaTercel #NissanSentra #ToyotaTercel4WDWagon

Murilee Martin

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, Hagerty and The Truth About Cars.

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Sector 5 on Feb 02, 2011

Lets not rose tint the past. My 90 Sentra was a raucous shitbox on the highway with only a 3-speed auto with no o/d [a GLC/323? would have been my smarter choice]. This Sentra's rear leg was pinched to say the least. I had oil leaks, an air pocket in the rad and the tranny smelt of Deep Woods Off - oh what could that have poss heralded..? Plus the sheetmetal was sooo miserably thin you only had to look at it to make a dent.

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Ronnie Schreiber on Feb 02, 2011

Going through my old 2X2X2 35mm stereo slide pairs for posting on Cars In Depth (I’ve been messing around with twin-film-camera 3D for about 15 years now),

Some of Murilee's handiwork:

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