Carspotting 2017

21 comments on Carspotting 2017
6 minutes

I photograph old cars wherever I find them parked. 2017 turned out to be a great year for finding them — this is probably the biggest harvest since I started doing this, back in 2012. What a bumper crop!

My two rules: the car has to be parked, and it has to be at least 20 years old. And so, here now the cars.

1961 Ford Falcon

1961 Ford Falcon. Margaret and I had finished a big dinner at our favorite Broad Ripple restaurant and were walking the surrounding neighborhood when we came upon this like-new Falcon. It has to have been restored at some point, pretty faithfully (I do question those dog-dish hubcaps).

1968 Buick Skylark

1968 Buick Skylark. I had to move fast, as this car was preparing for takeoff. I spotted it in the parking lot at the Walmart Neighborhood Market near where I used to live.

1968 Chevrolet Camaro

1968 Chevrolet Camaro. The parking lot behind the Nickel Plate Bar and Grill in Fishers turned out to be fertile ground for old cars this year. It’s always nice to come upon a Camaro that hasn’t been resto-modded into a firebreathing muscle car.

1969 Chevrolet Camaro

1969 Chevrolet Camaro. Like this one has. At least it is tastefully done. By the way, I lived in my old neighborhood ten years and saw exactly one old car parked there…until this year. This was the first of several I saw, but I managed to photograph only this one and one other.

1970 Pontiac Firebird Esprit

1970 Pontiac Firebird Esprit. Where the Camaro above was obviously a restoration, this Firebird is an unrestored original. That’s how I prefer them! Just check out the nicks in the paint. This was another find in the nearby Walmart parking lot.

1973 Chrysler Newport Custom

1973 Chrysler Newport Custom. This is far and away my favorite find of the year. My cigar-chomping great uncle William drove a car much like this one. I remember riding in my dad’s car once as we followed William somewhere. His windshield washer nozzles were misaimed, and he took great delight in spraying washer fluid all the way over his car and onto the hood of Dad’s 1971 Chevy Impala while we waited at a light. This was another find in the Nickel Plate parking lot.

1975 Ford Thunderbird

1975 Ford Thunderbird. A neighbor in my old neighborhood kept this car parked behind his house for several months before it suddenly appeared curbside. Turns out he’d listed it on Craigslist. It lingered here for several weeks, but finally disappeared.

1973-74 VW Thing

1973-74 VW Thing. My Toyota needed some attention from my mechanic. As I parked it on his lot I spied this funky little Thing looking pretty used up.

1977 Chevrolet Corvette

1977 Chevrolet Corvette. While taking my sons out for dinner in Fishers, we came upon this electric blue Corvette. On the one hand I respect it for surviving, but on the other I’m not much of a fan of these boulevard cruisers.

1977 Ford F-150

1977 Ford F-150. A building is going up next door to where I work in Fishers, and all manner of the workers’ trucks park nearby. This is by far the oldest truck I’ve seen.

1977-81 Pontiac Firebird

1977-81 Pontiac Firebird. On the day I helped my youngest son start his college career at the University of Indianapolis, we came upon this yellow Firebird on campus. Another unrestored survivor!

1983 Buick Skylark

1983 Buick Skylark. I see this car on the road near my office almost every day. It passes by at about 11 am, like clockwork, beneath the window of a conference room where I have a daily meeting. One day I spotted it parked at the McDonald’s down the street. I never thought of these “J cars” as particularly well built, so it’s always a surprise to find one still rolling.

1983 Jeep Wagoneer

1983 Jeep Wagoneer Brougham. Indiana lets drivers of antique cars use old license plates from the car’s model year. The plate on this one was from 1983, but this grille is from 1974. Maybe the owner liked that grille better and bolted it onto his Wagoneer. Wagoneer Broughams (as this car is badged) were made only from 1981-83. It was the mid-level trim those three years, slotting below the base model and the upper-trim Limited.

1987-89 Chevy Celebrity

1987-89 Chevrolet Celebrity. I was very surprised to find this well-used old car in a very tony Zionsville neighborhood.

1988 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera

1988 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. Olds made Cutlass Cieras with composite headlamps and the original six-window greenhouse for just one year: 1988. Spotted in downtown Fishers.

1989-95 Plymouth Acclaim

1989-95 Plymouth Acclaim. These changed so little across their run that it’s very hard to know which model year this one is. I always think of these as the perfect car for people who don’t like cars. My friend Elsa owned one twenty years ago when I first met her. She doesn’t care at all about cars. She’s owned two Accords since, and still says her Acclaim was her favorite car. Spotted in downtown Fishers.

1990-2000 BMW 3 seires

199x BMW 3-series. It’s hard to believe that BMW made these for so many years. To me, this is the ultimate 3-series body. I found this on the same day and in the same place as the 1977 Corvette. You can see the Vette’s hood through the BMW’s greenhouse.

1992-95 Pontiac Bonneville

1992-95 Pontiac Bonneville SE. Hard to believe these now qualify as old. Spotted at the Fishers Super Target.

1993-94 Ford Explorer Limited

1993-94 Ford Explorer Limited. Hard to believe given how many of these Ford made, but these early Explorers are quite rare today. Perhaps the Obama-era Cash for Clunkers program did a lot of them in. I found this one at the 38th St. Meijer (big-box store similar to Walmart) in Indianapolis.

1993-95 Chrysler LeBaron GTC

1993-95 Chrysler LeBaron GTC. The LeBaron was once a high-end Chrysler. This compact convertible had nothing to do with the model’s history and should have been named something else. Another find in the Nickel Plate parking lot.

1994-99 Dodge or Plymouth Neon

1994-99 Dodge/Plymouth Neon. I suppose this Neon could be newer than 20 years old, but it’s hard to tell just by looking at it, as Chrysler didn’t change these much over their manufacturing run. Someone sure slathered on the aftermarket trim bits, though. Spotted in the parking lot of my previous employer.

1995-96 Chevrolet Camaro Z28

1995-96 Chevrolet Camaro Z28. Spotted at an Indianapolis Dairy Queen, this Camaro was in mighty fine shape considering how badly these were flogged by their teenaged second, third, and fourth owners.

1995-97 Ford Contour

1995-97 Ford Contour. Another once-common car that’s mighty thin on the ground today, this early Contour was waiting for its owner at the 38th Street Indianapolis Meijer.

There! A whopping 23 cars this year. That’s almost one every two weeks! A remarkable harvest for here in Rustopia.


Comments

21 responses to “Carspotting 2017”

  1. J P Cavanaugh Avatar

    Wow, an impressive haul! Some of the more unique cars you have shot in years past were cars I had seen too. Not this year, as all of these are new to me.

    That Newport may be my pick of the crop as well.

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      The Newport was a wonderful find. Haven’t seen one in the wild for probably 25 years.

  2. Nick Avatar
    Nick

    Very nice collection!
    Didn’t know the “Thing” had so many nicknames, we just named it after its preedecessor “Kรผbel”. At one time the german army replaced the Bosch headlampes with Lucas’ made to prevent their soldiers from “organizing” replacement lamps for their private Beetles. Nice for me as I just had inherited my grandpas Morris Minor :=))

    Thanks for your blog Mr.Jim Grey. Always nice to come back for a good read.
    Nick

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      I gather that the Thing had different names in different markets, and this was the one VW used for North America. Glad you enjoy my blog!

  3. David Shivers Avatar

    I could recognize every car, make, model and approximate year. Nowadays, all cars look the same.

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      Heh, I’ve heard that “they all look the same” comment my whole life! Especially during the 80s when they were all boxy.

  4. Kurt Ingham Avatar
    Kurt Ingham

    It’s funny to me that I always remember those early Falcons as painted white.

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      Sooooo many of them were.

  5. Andy Umbo Avatar
    Andy Umbo

    Jim, always love your car featurette!

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      Always fun to put it together!

  6. Dan Cluley Avatar
    Dan Cluley

    That is a nice Chrysler, but my pick would be the Falcon. I like the ’62 grill best of all.

    Those ’91-’97 full size GM cars are still incredibly common in Mid Michigan. The building where my girlfriend lives has 24 apartments. Last summer, besides my Olds 98, that lot usually had another 98, two LeSabres & a Bonneville. I think we’re down to one of each at the moment.

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      The Falcon could have been my favorite, and it probably would have been had it been one of the “stripper specials” I remember most of them being back when!

  7. bodegabayf2 Avatar

    I have a soft spot in my heart for the 69 Camaro. I had one in high school.

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      That’s usually what it takes to create a soft spot!

  8. freelancewastrel Avatar

    A fantastic post! I’ve been doing the same for a couple of years. Older cars don’t seem to crop up as often as they used to here in the UK but I’ve seen a fair few near a friends place in France during the last year.

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      Thanks! It’s fun to photograph them when you see them. Some years they seem to come out of the woodwork, like they did this year!

  9. Marcus Avatar

    The 68 Skylark looks like a vulture, but the old Camaro and the Jeep Wagoneer are very nice indeed. My father had a Chevy Celebrity when I was in high school. Was glad when he replaced it with a Pontiac . . . something. Oh, a web search says Grand Prix. Nice car.

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      That Wagoneer is indeed a nice find. Curious about that grille though!

  10. Joe shoots resurrected cameras Avatar

    The Plymouth Acclaim was my first car so I have my own opinions about it. Admittedly it was given to me by my grandparents. And whatever it looks like, it’s on the smaller side and has a 3.0L V6 minivan engine so really it’s a sleeper and back in the day I’d smoke lots of cars that looked cooler but didn’t perform as well. I still miss that car…

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      It doesn’t surprise me at all that Chrysler made essentially a sleeper Acclaim. They were pretty free with dropping engines into K-car chassis(es) in those days.

  11. […] fellow blogger Jim Grey I photograph old cars whenever I spot one and although a beautifully restored example is wonderful […]

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