Los Angeles

1979 Honda Civic CVCC

Posted by The Professor

This is a final-year first-generation Civic, the car that really cemented Honda’s place in the US market. The Civic first came to our shores in 1973, three years after Honda officially entered the market with the N600 and later Z600: both of which were too small to be successful in an American market still saturated with hulking land yachts. The Civic’s success largely stemmed from its fortuitous timing: it arrived just as the 1973 oil crisis began to take foot, prompting an increased demand for smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, both qualities possessed by the new Civic.

Honda’s subsequent climb in sales was quite striking: starting from just 4,195 US sales in 1970, they crested the 100,000 per year mark in 1976 and by the time this Civic came around in 1979, Honda was selling over 350,000 cars in the US per year. And to think it was this little car that started it all.

Atwater Village, Los Angeles, CA

Photographed August 2017

1974 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray

Posted by The Professor

The license-plate frame on this Corvette says it’s a ’74 model, and I’m inclined to believe it, but the rear bumper is definitely from a ’75 [EDIT: it’s actually a ’76-’77 bumper, as pointed out by a helpful commenter] Corvette. 1974 Corvettes were the first year of the urethane-molded rear bumper assembly, but the first year had a split bumper with a visible seam running down the middle (which isn’t visible on this car’s bumper). The presence of rear bumper guards also pegs this as a later model. But the front bumper is definitely from a ’74: otherwise it would have bumper guards of its own. So my best guess is that this is indeed a ’74 Corvette, but one that got rear-ended at some point and reassembled by a less-than-fastidious repairer.

Sawtelle, Los Angeles, CA

Photographed June 2015

1991 Toyota Supra

Posted by The Professor

This is one of just 3,623 1991 Supras sold in the North American market, continuing the downward trend of sales ever since the 3rd generation’s introduction in 1986. For some reason, I always feel like the 3rd-gen Supra is the most forgotten model in the Supra lineage: the 2nd-gen really thrust the Supra into the public eye and made it a desirable commodity, and the 4th-gen is an icon of the ’90s Japanese sports-car era. The 3rd-gen just never seemed to attain the same aura as its surrounding generations.

I guess you could make a case that the 1st-gen Supra was even more forgettable, but it only lasted a few years and was mostly a Celica with an I-6 dropped into the engine bay. The 3rd-gen was the first Supra to be a completely differentiated model from the Celica, and I feel like that gave it the legs to survive in the collective memory of the public far better than it ended up doing. I don’t know, though: maybe it’s just me?

Sawtelle, Los Angeles, CA

Photographed June 2015

1961 Ford Ranchero

Posted by The Professor

One of the most tragic byproducts of the evolution in car design has been the elimination of two-tone paintwork from the automotive color palette. Not that this Ranchero is the poster child of two-tone application: cream and light brown render perhaps too much of a resemblance to an oversized vanilla fudge sundae, but still: a massive improvement over a hypothetical solely-cream-colored Ranchero, which would just look like a slab of vanilla popsicle.

Just as two flavors are always better than one; so too are two car colors. Also, California should totally bring black the blue plates from the ’70s and early ’80s like this Ranchero has: they’re much more visually interesting than the drab blue-lettering-on-white-background plate that they haven’t changed since about 1993.

Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA

Photographed August 2017

1984 Volkswagen Jetta

Posted by The Professor

After a brief new-car interlude, we return to our specialty with this Jetta: cars that most people wouldn’t look twice at but ones that are rapidly disappearing from the US’s roads. This is an ’84, the last year of the first-generation Jetta: one of 36,636 sold that year and one of 110,281 first-generation models sold on our shores over five model years. For comparison, the modern-day Jetta has eclipsed that number every year since 2010.

With 110,000 Jettas sold you’d think they would still be relatively common, at least until you realize Chevrolet sold 811,540 Citations in one model year and there are approximately 3 left in the country. Most of these cars have long since been disposed of, and this is one of the very few still left.

Del Rey, Los Angeles, CA

Photographed July 2017