UFO Spotted In Oakland. Can You Identify It?

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

I was in my old East Bay stomping grounds last weekend, to drive the Scion FR-S (review coming soon) and watch the Oakland A’s beat up the hapless Red Sox. I also spotted one of the greatest motor vehicles in history while driving down High Street on the way to The Island That Rust Forgot. It featured the letters “UFO” across a vaguely tailgate-ish rear body panel. I’ve puzzled out the type of vehicle it’s based on. Can you?

Actually, I cheated a little by looking up the license plate in the California smog check database. It’s a 1973 Chevy Luv pickup with a whole bunch of innovative modifications.

I tried to talk to the driver about it, but she seemed reluctant to chat with anyone in a Hot Lava Orange Scion.

The world needs more customized trucks like this!




Murilee Martin
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, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • Menloparklimousine Menloparklimousine on Sep 06, 2012

    It very attractive and beautiful car. It is much costly I think and may unaffordable for a middle class family. usually middle class families do not purchase these car, they prefer taxi cabs and limousine taxi cab services for their pleasure. It may affordable to them. so, company should care about the preference and choice of these families, while making new models of cars.

  • Multicam Multicam on Sep 06, 2012

    Looks like something out of Mad Max.

  • Varezhka Maybe the volume was not big enough to really matter anyways, but losing a “passenger car” for a mostly “light truck” line-up should help Subaru with their CAFE numbers too.
  • Varezhka For this category my car of choice would be the CX-50. But between the two cars listed I’d select the RAV4 over CR-V. I’ve always preferred NA over small turbos and for hybrids THS’ longer history shows in its refinement.
  • AZFelix I would suggest a variation on the 'fcuk, marry, kill' game using 'track, buy, lease' with three similar automotive selections.
  • Formula m For the gas versions I like the Honda CRV. Haven’t driven the hybrids yet.
  • SCE to AUX All that lift makes for an easy rollover of your $70k truck.
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