this is a car that i didn’t know anything about before going out to California. built by International Harvester (now a part of commercial truck manufacturer Navistar International), the Scout was one of the first American-built SUVs available to the public and was produced from 1961-1980. i don’t know how well they sold but i’ve seen 4-5 different examples while i was in Los Angeles.

design-wise, they’re very utilitarian with an undertone of awesomeness. feature-wise, they’re pretty basic; there are no creature comforts to speak of unless you count padded seats and a shifter that won’t stab you every time you change gear. add some manly features like a winch, run-flat tires and a gun rack and you could go dinosaur hunting.

clever girl.

they claim that the first car ever seen by 60% of the developing world’s population is the Land Rover (i’m guessing the other 40% saw the Toyota Land Cruiser). yeah, Land Rovers in general are pretty tough little cars. they’ve traveled the world and have been used by all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons. they say 70% of all Land Rovers ever built are still in use today. 70%!

what fascinates me about this one (other than it being only a few feet away from me) is that “POLICIA MILITAR” is written on the side, indicating that this particular vehicle may have been used by the military police of a Spanish or Portuguese speaking country. cool, eh?

it also looks like it could eat that Mini behind it.

okay, this one completely caught me off guard. it’s called the “IT” produced by a Canadian electric car company called Dynasty. yeah, i didn’t know there were any Canadian automakers, either. i suppose the biggest surprise wasn’t that the Canadians were building cars or that one had somehow made it down to California but the fact that i was staring at a pickup truck.

according to Wikipedia, the Dynasty IT has a range of 30 miles (50 kilometers) but doesn’t go any faster than 25mph (40 kph) which means, at top speed, you can only drive for a little more than an hour before you have to charge the batteries again and that estimate is without cargo. these limitations might be fine in a dense, congested city like Rome or New York where you probably can’t go fast anyway but it seems like it’d be pretty useless in Los Angeles, a sprawling city connected by freeways.

still, it’s fun to see that there are people out there doing electric versions of different vehicles. who knows, maybe there’ll be full-sized electric pickups carrying loads of precariously balanced pipes and taking up multiple parking spaces in a city near you one day.

today’s car is a Chevrolet Bel Air Convertible from the early 50s that i found in one of the nicer neighborhoods around here. um, it’s black with chrome accents, has four wheels and seems to be in pretty decent shape.

in case you couldn’t tell, i don’t know a whole lot about old American cars. i can ballpark their age by tracing the evolution of car design but they all start to look the same to me after that. i blame my lack of knowledge on harsh Chicago winters that destroyed these cars before i was born. i’m starting to learn, though. sort of.

this is probably one of the most unusual cars i’ve ever seen in person: a Hudson Eight Convertible from the ’30s. i totally dig the super awesome eagle hood ornament and folding rear bench but i don’t know a whole lot about Hudson or the Eight other than that this will probably be the only one i ever see. the sad thing is, i pass by this car all the time but it’s always locked in its cage.

okay, that’s all i’ve got for this one.

today we’ve got a Mercedes Benz 220 (chassis code W111) from the ’60s painted in what appears to be blood. although it bears resemblance to the much more expensive Mercedes Benz 600 (used by many ruthless dictators), the 220 is nowhere near as big or menacing which leads me to believe that it was primarily used to ferry around wealthy jerks.

plainly, this 220 has seen better days what with its multiple scuffs and scratches, severely dented front end and its tattered interior but i’d argue that these flaws give it character which make it much more interesting than a mint condition example. what’s more, look at the front and you’ll find three grille badges which function as classy bumper stickers.

the UK, the US, and Ethiopia: a strange combination for anyone that’s not an Ethiopian-born British expat. i want to know more about this car, about its current and previous owners, how it got all those dents and scratches, and why it was painted that ugly red color. i wish i could find out more but i don’t want to invade anyone’s privacy.

okay, i’m too lazy to wait for its owner.

today’s car is a Cadillac DeVille convertible from the mid ’60s. i’ve always been fascinated with how the DeVille went from being a hot rod and a lowrider to its final incarnation as a crappy senior citizen’s land barge. of all the later generation (’80s to ’00s) DeVilles i’ve seen out on the street, the only driver that wasn’t old and frail was fat and definitely stupid. so, if you see one, avoid it because the driver will either race you, shoot you, or slam on the brakes for no apparent reason.

this here is the Reatta, Buick’s luxury sports coupe from the late ’80s to early ’90s. no one knows why Buick decided to build a slow, fast looking car but rumor has it that it’s because they were idiots. this monstrosity sold so poorly and to people with such low brain activity that the Reatta has now become exceedingly rare. case in point, this is only the second one i’ve ever seen and will hopefully be the last.

being a warm, relatively dry environment, California is a great place to find interesting/rare/vintage cars which somewhat dulls the horror of being here. so, starting now, i’m going to be posting some of the interesting/rare/vintage cars that i’ve come across here in Los Angeles. so let’s start things off.

as the name might suggest, the Karmann Ghia was a Volkswagen collaboration between Italian design firm Ghia and the German coach builder Karmann. unfortunately, i don’t know a whole lot else about it other than that it’s gorgeous. i saw a lime green example once back in Chicago but i’ve seen three or four of these babies here just within a month or so. fantastic.

anyway, that was the first of probably many installments of interesting/rare/vintage cars in Los Angeles. these will get better, i promise.

okay. i hope.

it’s with great sadness that i write about the first death of the 2009 Dakar Rally. forty-nine year old Frenchman Pascal Terry activated his emergency beacon on January 4th after his motorbike ran out of fuel, leaving him stranded in the remote Argentine countryside. however, due to a communications error, they didn’t locate his bike until yesterday when they found him dead at the scene.

cause of death is not yet known but hopefully this will be the last one.