There’s nothing like vintage photos to recapture the feel of a different era. RalfK posted a couple of shots at the Cohort that do that very effectively. This first on was taken at San Francisco Beach in 1980. That F100 really takes me back, when project or just beater pickups were so common. And there’s an eclectic mix of other cars in the shot.
This one, of a battered ’64 Chevy II Nova, was taken in Seattle “in the early 80’s”. Looks about right for the times, in more ways than one.
F100s were not really a common thing in the 80s in northern Indiana. But beater Chevy IIs — now you’re talking.
A friend of mine had a beater in the 80s that had been in an accident that rotated the body off the chassis a few degrees. He’d be driving down a two lane road and people coming the other way sometimes thought he was crossing over the center line and headed right for them, and freak out.
That battered Chevy II makes me sad, probably because my beloved paternal grandmother bought one of the very first in 62, a little four-banger 100-series with stick shift that she drove until her eyesight began failing at the end of her life. She gave the car to my Dad who used it as an extra beater commuter until rust finally overcame the body, right around 1980. A good car, well built and very reliable. Despite all the crap people throw at the four, it wasn’t a bad little engine, at least in our experience.
I always liked the styling of the early Chevy IIs, crisp and no-nonsense. The big greenhouse produced great visibility and headroom. Pushing the headlights out to the end of the fenders made the cars look bigger than they were. As Jim notes, the Chevy IIs were big sellers in IN and were on the scene a long time after their initial popularity.
Wow, my grandma, also had a turquoise blue Chevy II, like that one, but a 4door sedan. It was formerly owned by my aunt, who gave it to my grandma, when she upgraded to a new car. My dad used it, after he got outta the Air Force, as a Master Sergeant, from the Philippines, with my mom pregnant with me,… Till he got his first car, a new 1971 Dodge Dart Swinger coupe.
My lovely grandmother, owned the lil Chevy II, till she bought a 1976 Olds Cutlass Supreme coupe, in 1977.
I miss my beautiful grandma, and those wonderful cars.
Thanks, for these great pics.
Nice pix ! .
I had several Chevy II’s , one or two were the Nova package .
My favorite was a ’63 Nova Super Sport I got from Kansas, little old Lady’s car .
Good cars but *very* light and cheap .
-Nate
I just noticed the happy guy in the bed of the F100. Reminds me of being a kid in California when riding in the bed of a truck was fairly common. Now that was fun! (But probably dangerous!)
We would pile into the bed of someone’s pickup and never give it a second thought. A few times around the 4th of July, we’d launch bottle rockets while cruising down the road. Good times.
I remember when a bunch of us went from Federal Way to Seattle Seafair in a turquoise 1955 F-100 similar to the 1954 shown. By “a bunch” I mean three in the cab and about five or six in the box. The driver decided to go up James Street hill and got stopped at a red light. The 6-cylinder 3-speed truck couldn’t start up with that load, so we all bailed out, he turned right, we all got back in, and he headed back downhill.
About 1976 or so, there was a fad in Southern California for lowering and blinging out mid-50’s Ford pickups, especially the “big window” ’56s. It came and went very fast.
Critics go on and on about “awful domestic compact cars” of the past, and forget about Valiants , Dusters, Darts, Novas, and Falcons.