Type “brown and crispy” into your favorite search engine, and you’ll get mouth-watering images of rice krispie treats and hash browns. But these words can also be accurate adjectives to describe a car that’s sat outside in the elements for several years. And there’s something fun about the unique finish (forget snooty patina) you get from leaving a car out in the weather or under some trees for several years – it can’t be reproduced or copied, it’s bound to get attention, and it’ll make your car far more theft-proof than any alarm system. Check out this 1975 BMW 2002 for sale for $700 in Petaluma, CA.
Brown ‘n’ Crispy – 1975 BMW 2002
March 19, 2014If The Van’s A-Rockin’ – 1964 Ford Econoline
March 19, 2014One of the great things about old cars is they’re so easily able to illustrate a specific time in history (well, at least the last 120 years). Conversion vans are definitely one of those vehicles – remnants of a relatively short-lived fad that could have been an outgrowth of the craze for VW Type 2 vans in the late sixties. Take dad’s old trade van, airbrush something cool on the outside, and pick from a list of bar/shag carpet/heart shaped windows/quadraphonic stereo with 8-track player/bed/captain’s chairs/tuck-and-roll vinyl to complete the effect. Sure, you’ll want to throw a whole bottle of Lysol at the interior of this thing, but after that, it’s the perfect canvas for a restoration, not to when it was new, but to its reinvention at the age of ten or so. You can find this 1964 Ford Econoline for sale for $3500 in Santa Rosa, CA.
Snowballer – 1978 Mercedes 280 SLC
March 18, 2014The coupe version of the R107 roadster, the C107, never saw as much success, and was allowed to expire soon after the C126 coupe debuted in 1980. However, that makes it an appealing value-for-money alternative to its brother and son, and in European specification with the smaller bumpers, the design is actually quite elegant in a period 1970s kind of way. Because after all, who doesn’t like a car that comes from the factory with window louvers? You can find this 1978 Mercedes 280 SLC for sale for $4000 in Auburn, CA.


