This is our second gallery of Seattle images from the late ’70s/early ’80s, and once again, they feature a good amount of car spotting. Also, just like last time, they contain a nice mix of domestic and foreign metal on the streets.
On this occasion, the first three images come from regular Cohort contributor Ralf K, with the remaining being from the web (starting with the Chevy dealer). Regardless, all are dated to 1979 and 1980.
Yes I lived in Seattle in summer of 1979. Good memories 👍😊
The first time I traveled to Seattle was the summer of 1979.
That Safeway looks familiar (but most West Coast Safeways looked that way back then). I stopped at a very similar Safeway to pick up a week’s worth of groceries to load in my backpack before getting on the state ferry (which departed from Seattle back then) to Alaska.
It’s quite crowded , by the look of the parking lot. Several “northern VA, stores looked like this one , back then, too.
Look at the body lean on that ‘71-2 Ford Galaxy wagon in the third pic! I had a ‘71 Galaxy Country Sedan Wagon and it rode great. Handling….not so much
Lol I noticed that too. As in – they clipped the apex, but will it make the curb?
These are always fun posts. The featured vehicles deserve their screen time but the unexpected finds are a real treat. Today, two of my favorite former rides… the Datsun B210 hatchback just beyond the Buick Electra coupe and the blue Chevette hatchback in front of the Chevy dealer.
Which pic has the “Buick” and the “Datsun”? Can’t find them.
“Chevy Laguna”, in the “Safeway” lot.
The third photo (Austin Healey pic) shows how much Seattle has changed. That intersection was the start/terminus of Interstate 90 until the freeway was finally finished in 1989. For 20+ years, there were a set of unfinished ramps meant to link Interstates 5 and 90. During the years the ramps and the last half mile or so of I-90 was unfinished, you had to drive 2-3 blocks of surface streets (Dearborn St.) to travel between the freeways.
Great images! And thanks Ralf K for the contributions.
I could find a few of these locations. The picture with the Austin-Healey was taken on the 1300 block of S. Dearborn St. – amazingly there’s still a Goodwill there, and the industrial garage-looking building down the block is still standing as well. Then-and-now comparison from Google StreetView is below.
The Chevrolet dealer was Gene Fiedler Chevrolet on the 4100 block of SW Alaska St. The site is now an apartment complex.
The shopping district scene is the 4700 block of California Ave. Also an apartment complex now.
The Safeway was on the 2600 block of California. There’s still a Safeway there, though the building is new, and the former parking lot has been developed into additional retail buildings (the supermarket’s parking lot is now on the roof of the building).
Eric, you’ve got a good eye. The old Kingdome was replaced by Lumen Field, now home of the Seahawks. My first visit was in 1980 and I moved to Seattle in 2006. I’m still here and happy for it. One of the most notable cars on the road now are Teslas. There’s a large Tesla office in Bellevue.
Ah, but the red MGA is missing…
Everybody will see something that means something to them: For me, the Formula S Barracuda, Aspen patrol car and the rally wheeled Buick in the Safeway lot…
I remember spending a week or two in Seattle in the Summer of ’69, I liked it there, my father not so much ~ I think it scared him .
After he moved to Bellingham, Wa. Id pass through Seattle every time I drove up to visit him, Seattle is weird, apart from the crime I still rather like it there as it’s a relaxed city .
-Nate
My take-away: the surprising number of pickups in #1. The West Coast was always the trend-setter, and I’ve read articles from the mid-’60s that point out how popular pickups were becoming for personal transportation.
I’ll make a guess on that picture. Looks like the photo was taken next to the elevated Alaskan Way Viaduct just south of downtown. That would place it adjacent at the Port of Seattle, so my guess is that those cars and trucks were port employees’ vehicles – longshoremen, shipyard workers, etc… so folks who would have been more likely than other West Coast urban drivers to be driving pickups at that time.
The instant I saw that elevated freeway structure I thought of the Cypress Structure in Oakland. The supports look thinner than the Cypress Structure that was competed in 1955. Built on filled land over soft mud before they understood how to effectively use rebar resulted in it’s collapse. Not that would have stopped the collapse.
Seems the Viaduct was built in the same time frame as the Cypress Structure and the Embarcadero Freeway. One split in half a black community to it’s detriment and the other isolated the waterfront from the city to it’s detriment. So it was taken down 30 years after the Loma Prieta earthquahe I see.
We lived in Seattle for the summer of 1963. Many memories, including learn to ride a bike without training wheels, but my favorite was watching the people across the street wash their green 1949-ish Chevy fastback every Saturday evening. The sun set much later than in central California where we lived normally.
I especially love seeing that pristine 1965 Cadillac Coupe DeVille. In 1980, it looked like Old Money.
Come to think of it, it looks like Old Money today.
I spent most of the summer of 1981 staying with my grandparents in Seattle (I was 16 at the time). These pics sure bring back memories (especially the SPD Aspen…).
I hope Evelyn Banzuela enjoyed her 15 minutes of fame. This era really was the twilight of the full-sized American car–in another 5 years, the foreign and domestic econoboxes would have continued multiplying.
I’d like to think that proud old Cadillac in the 2nd image somehow made it into a private collection somewhere, but I doubt it.
I was born in Seattle at the end of 83 and while I didn’t grow up there I visited there and remember the city looking like this. It’s a completely different place now so seeing it how I remember it makes me very happy.
Chevrolet dealer photo.
That Chevette is NO NEWER than 1980 (that’s the “new for 1980” rear end).
The real star is the car behind it–a 68 Barracuda fastback.
I can tell you this: on Long Island, or Queens, in 1980, most 1968s still on the road looked pretty rough. And I don’t recall ever seeing such an old MGA (or whatever it is, the rear end screams early/mid 1960s) on the street in the late 70s in metro NY.
I moved to Seattle in the fall of 1978 for college. The Dodge Aspen cop car brings back some memories. (I think I’ll leave it at that.) And from the same photo, I now have the Tradewell jingle stuck in my head. “When you buy and we sell, we both trade well.” Ugh.
I spent a week in Seattle in May 1980 to get the lay of the land and moved here in July 1981.
The seed was actually planted in the late summer of 1973 when I spent a week or so here visiting friends. At that time I was hitchhiking with my personal effects in a backpack, I had long hair, and I’m sure I looked like a stereotypical hippie. One day I had my thumb out on eastbound Denny Way to hitch up the viaduct to Capitol Hill. (Different viaduct from the Alaskan Way Viaduct in the photo.) A woman in an eastbound station wagon (with a couple of small children) saw me and leaned over to lock the front passenger side door. Like I was going to run alongside the car at 30 mph, open the door, and commit some crime. I was rather annoyed.
Today she’d be driving a minivan, and she would have activated the central locking before pulling out of her driveway.
The VW Beetle next to the orange Chevy pickup in the last picture is a 1967 model. The “no louvers” decklid and bumper with overriders are unique to that year. There’s a very similar one in my part of Houston, at a grocery store I stop at often. Posted a picture of it on another forum, and was told about those characteristics. Interesting to me since that is the year I was born….
Great pictures. I’m married (43 years) to a Seattle woman. We lived not far from the Tradewell market shown . It’s in an area called West Seattle. I recall a number of these places, and the long shot down Dearborn Street showing the now long gone Kingdome was a good one.
We raised our children there but we’ve been retired almost 10 years. We left Seattle then and now live in a small town on what is called the Olympic Peninsula.
Haven’t seen a pix of an Aspen/Volare police car in ages. I remember (I think!) certain NYC area police agencies – like the Transit authority – used them (and later, Aries/Reliants); Nevada HP used them too. Apparently, with their relative light weight & 318 (or even 360!) engines, they were hot-rod “Bear” cars for their day (pre-Mustang; post Javelin). Too bad frame & torsion bar issues cut their career as short.