My First Curbside Finds (2008-2009) – In The Beginning…

CC’s 15th birthday has me wallowing in a bit of nostalgia. I looked through the files of my early years of curbside finds and realized that quite a few never made it to the pages of CC, so I’m going to go through them and show them as well as ones I have posted before. Let’s time travel back to 2008 and take a walk on the streets of Eugene together…

Somewhat ironically, I came to shooting cars at the curb quite late, and I sorely wish I’d started earlier. I saved all my precious color film for family back then, but I did shoot Stephanie in front of this ’51 Mercury we both admired on our walks in Santa Monica in about 1979 or so. And yes, there’s a few more CCs hiding behind its corpulent body. Calling Patrick Bell!

 

Strictly speaking, this ’68 Saab 96 V4 was the first car I shot specifically for the web, on February 7, 2008. I sent it to Murilee Martin at Jalopnik, who had been posting shots of old cars he found on the street. Yes, his postings were an inspiration for doing CCs, although I took a rather different approach, with greater historical detail and context. I think he had noted the lack of any old Saabs in his hometown of Alameda so I sent this to him and he posted it.

My second shoot was of this pristine 1978 Plymouth Sapporo (Mitsubishi Gallant) for MM in March of 2008, as I had seen it a number of times and was amazed at its condition. This had clearly been a grandpa/grandma car and stashed away in a garage before the new owners bought it. They used it as their daily driver for at least ten years, as I saw it regularly and shot it again in 2017, looking…ten years older. This should have gone to a museum, as it was essentially in like-new condition in 2008.

Number three was the Transvertible, This was from May of 2008, and I hadn’t yet started posting CCs at the old site, but how could I resist? One of my favorite finds ever.

The fourth car I shot was this incredibly cute little 1979 Suzuki Jimny pickup (LJ80/SJ20). I just fell in love with it, but then that’s essentially what I do with so many cars I shoot. But fortunately, it’s always just a quick crush and one that dissipates after I write it up. Good thing, otherwise I’d have owned hundreds of cars by now. It’s really a very practical way of dealing with my love for so many cars.

Early in 2009 my son Ed, who was then the Managing Editor of ttac, asked me to come back from a sabbatical and start posting there again. I wasn’t sure about that, and was a bit tired of doing more of the same. But then one day on one of our daily walks I found this gnarly old Cadillac Coupe DeVille, and it instantly reminded me of an experience in one I had hitchhiking in 1971. It was actually not so much about the car itself but the role Cadillac had come to play in America’s society by the early seventies, when incomes were high and Caddy prices were at an all-time low in inflation adjusted terms. So I wrote up the story and fished around for a new name for what I saw as a possible series. I don’t remember how many names I considered but when I came up with “Curbside Classic”, it just felt right on several levels, as my intent was to honor the old and original cars still plying the streets of Eugene at the time. And thus was born my first Curbside Classic post.

That post got a very positive reaction from the readers at ttac, and so I embarked on a mission to shoot as many old cars in Eugene as I could. I had gotten pretty burned out covering the typical ttac subjects and now I felt I had found a niche of my own. And except for MM, no one was really doing that on the web, so I ran with it. And started carrying my camera everywhere and shooting all the older cars, knowing fully that there would be a time before long that most or all of them would be gone, like this Corolla Liftback.

My timing was good, inasmuch as the Great Recession that started in 2008 meant that a lot of folks couldn’t afford a new or newer car, so a lot of old iron was kept in front line service. Sure, there’s still old cars to be found, but usually either fixed up hobby cars or moldering in the far end of a driveway or side yard. Back then there gobs of cars like this ’62 VW Beetle in regular use. You can be sure it’s long been restored and may well have been sold on Bring A Trailer for $25,000. I never wrote this one up as I had a ’63 and ’64.

Scouts were still common too, like this fine Scout II, from 1973 I believe. We even had a shop in town (“Mr. Scout”) that sold and serviced only vintage Scouts. They lasted for quite a while, but closed up maybe ten years or so ago. I never wrote up this one, but may have used it in another Scout post.

This was the first K-Car I shot, a later facelifted one. I used an early one for my K-Car CC, but this one was just like one I had for a few months as a company car. I was not sad to say goodbye to it, given that it was replaced by a new Mercedes 300E. That was a serious upgrade!

I’d seen this fine old GMC pickup in my neighborhood, so I wasted no time shooting it. It had the GMC 60 degree V6 engine, and for the first time I dug a bit deeper into the design and history of this rather unique truck engine in my write-up of it. It was an opportunity to learn and share what I learned. Which is of course what I like to do.

This Dodge Aspen was also a familiar sight in my neighborhood and so it too quickly found my way into this first file of photos from early 2009. And eventually it was one half of my Aspen-Volare Chrysler Deadly Sin post, but for a year or two later after I had started my GM DS series.

My first of many Pinto finds to come was this “butt shelf” 1974 Runabout. Now that I was shooting cars, I became much more observant about details I had long just sort of suppressed, like the length and lack of integration of these 5-mile rear bumpers. OOF!

This neglected Lincoln TC had a very fitting backdrop, an old set of alley garages for a 1920s small apartment building. Just the right size for Model As, but no so much for Lincolns, even downsized ones. This one sat here for quite a few more years, looking more and more like the garages until it was finally hauled off.

Even back then, these Mazda GLC wagons were pretty rare. They kept making these even after the GLC went to FWD. A simple, rugged little Japanese wagon that so many simple, rugged Eugenians coveted for basic transportation.

The first VW Dasher that I shot, this one carrying pruning ladders and sporting a few borrowed body parts. It was replaced a few years later by a…Toyota Corolla wagon; what else?

This one presented me with my first challenge of dealing with an…eccentric owner in their car. Of course I was intrigued by this Isuzu Amigo with all sorts of things hanging from it and the rather cryptic signs on its sides. I remember approaching him with my camera in hand, asking if it was ok to take some shots. He gave me a precursory nod but I could tell he was in no mood to actually engage. I’ve learned to get a vibe from owners very quickly and respond appropriately, and with one or two fairly minor exceptions, have never had a real issue with folks seeing me shooting their cars. I just give them a big smile and say “I love your car! Ok if I take a few pictures? It always seems to work.

I found this TR-4 sitting behind The Sports Car Shop, so was this cheating? I would go on to shoot quite a few cars there; fair game, I decided. But my CC on the TR-4 was on a genuine CC, one I’d seen around for years.

The first of many fuselages that I shot, a ’72 Plymouth Fury Custom Suburban, with its rear overhanging the parking curb.

I’d quite forgotten about this Dodge D100 pickup, from the 1965-1967 era. I also never used it, so it’s getting its first outing here.

The first of a number of X-Body Skylarks I would find and shoot. It became very apparent that their survival rate was drastically higher than its X-Body stablemates. I used another one for my post on these, one of which I drove for a couple of years as a company car. It was better than might be expected, in reliability too.

This is the first of a surprisingly significant number of Nissan Stanza Wagons that were on the streets of Eugene at the time. The folks here seemed to have a thing for them, which was understandable: it was a rather classic Eugene-mobile: compact but roomy, simple and rugged. And an AWD version was available. I did a CC of another one here. And…to my great surprise, I spotted a brown one just like this one in a driveway just the other day. I couldn’t stop, but I hope to catch it again. It’s been years since I’d last seen one.

The Stanza was shot on March 7, 2009, so I have more to share in a coming post. And then there’s 2010, and… It’s like time traveling, back when so many CC’s roamed the streets of Eugene.