Old phone company van or rabid Seahawks fan?
Most people would walk right past this Dodge Ram Van without a second thought. Not me, but of course I have a problem. And even though I want to know the van’s back-story, I also don’t want to get “caught” snapping the photo. Can’t have it both ways, Swede! So, as a compromise, here are some random anonymous classics from my leg-stretching route.
Rust Never Sleeps
I snapped this rather forlorn Mopar to commiserate with our friends from the Northeast, where roads are salted in wintertime and old cars don’t last. I just wanted to show that here in the Pacific Northwest, our old cars tend to rust from the top down. Though our roads are not heavily salted, we must still get some acid rain, as evidenced by the hood on this warhorse. This is not to say a Bellingham car won’t rust down below, just that it may stay on the road long enough to rust everywhere else first. The roof rack tells me that some young person is milking every last ounce of life from the thing. Props to you.
Go Ford Ranger, Go
On a sunnier note is this little Ford Ranger. It has many brethren in my town, built Ford tough. Always nice to see the blue oval at work on our city streets.
Two tone half ton
Another daily from Dearborn that gets some good action as a dump-runner. This F-150 is tucked behind a row of nice bungalows that face onto a city park. Lots of leaves to deal with, and a “good problem to have.”
Geo drone
Circling back to the roof rack classics, here is a nice little Geo worker-bee. This one has been around for years, and is sometimes topped with bikes, boards, or kayaks.
VW daily driver
Another classic without enough inner storage. This sweet little Beetle shows up often at the grocery store and looks like a daily driver.
Hopped up Volvo 544
Often parked in front of a local brewery is this Volvo 544. It looks pretty good, but there is another fully restored 544 that stops by too. The nicer one is a great shade of turquoise, almost like Crest toothpaste. Probably the same person owns both and sometimes drives the donor car.
I Stand with Ukraine
When I saw this Mercedes today I was slightly let down. Usually there is super-clean late-seventies Ford Courier parked in the same spot. Hopefully it will be there again for future CCs. The location is the Ukrainian Evangelical Church in Bellingham, once called St. John’s Lutheran. The church burned a couple of years ago and some say it was arson. In the meantime, the church members have banded together to rebuild and are doing an amazing job of it. This is where my folks were married in the fifties.
Isuzu ELF-250 or Mars rover?
Finally, it wouldn’t be Bellingham without some JDM craziness. Here is the business end of an Isuzu ELF-250, possibly a surplus fire-fighting unit. Well, that’s all the RAM Van for now. Stay tuned for future random ramblings.
Love that old PV544; my brother’s friend had one just like it, and I rode in it a number of times. The very long gear shift was an effective torque gauge, as it moved back and forth with the engine’s torque output.
Yes, these JDM fire trucks are rather common now. They have like only a few thousand miles on them, and were immaculately maintained. There’s one running around my neighborhood.
We get the ex JDM trucks and cars, they all look absolutely mint, however deferred maintenance takes some out
Nice collection of catches!
If I needed a van, I’d snap up that ex-phone company one for no other reason than it’s paint scheme. Excellent.
I’ve never seen a K car with a roof rack. I have to say that it seems like a general improvement to me. They should have come that way from the factory. In fact, I think the added roof racks on all of the cars here that have them are an improvement. Except for the Geo. There’s no helping that poor thing.
Love the 544! That crest toothpaste color you describe for the more-restored one is actually a factory color. I think that Volvos of that vintage (Amazon wagons in particular) look quite good in that minty green color.
My wife is my spotter and she likened the Volvo color to Crest toothpaste. When I finally saw the restored 544 she was right. I can see why it was a factory color (looks great on that car!).
Found the F-150. I figured it must have been Broadway park by the description of bungalows facing a park. (I lived a few blocks away in the 80’s)
Your pics remind me of what I see on the side streets of Tacoma. Gotta love Western Washington for its better-than-average older car survival rate!
“Most people would walk right past this Dodge Ram Van without a second thought. Not me, but of course I have a problem.”
Sir, I wish in no way to embarrass you, but it IS in Condition 6.3 of being on this site that a participant must agree to have the very problem you advert to. (God knows, I’ve got it as bad as it comes).
I’ll take the ever-improved-by-time 190E, as I suspect a tough old Isuzu would suit current Ukranian, er, conditions, better.
It’s always a bit funny to see Suzies – Isuzus – of any sort as exotics, because downunder, they’re as common as muck (though that itself hasn’t been a common sight since the cities were all sewered a good 70 years ago, but I digress).
Isuzu’s aren’t really exotic here, though the cars and light-duty trucks and SUV’s are approaching that status. But the N and F Series commercial trucks are very common. In fact Isuzu are targeting a specific market with the NPR.
I miss visiting my father when he lived in Bellingham, it’s a nice College town .
-Nate