Good morning, Autopians! It’s that time once again, and today we have two random oddball vehicles from opposite ends of the country. Why? Because I can. But first let’s see how our derelict ’50s yachts fared:
Looks like smooth sailing for our Packard Clipper to an easy win. The Olds might be a little easier to find parts for, but its eight cylinders are arranged the wrong way.
Today, there is no theme. No tie that binds. Once or twice a week, in the course of looking for vehicles to feature, I come across something that just doesn’t have an obvious mate, that doesn’t really match up with anything else. We’ve had a few odd pairings before, but nothing as mismatched as these two. They go together like chocolate sauce and iron filings, which is to say, not at all. [Editor’s Note: Pretty sure I’ve seen David eat that. – JT] But I think they’re both cool, so let’s dive in and see what we can make of them.
1969 Chevrolet C-70 fire truck – $1,000
Engine/drivetrain: engine not specified, manual, RWD
Location: Concord, CA
Odometer reading: 11,000 miles
Runs/drives? Sadly, no
The first two things you need to know are 1.) it’s a fire truck! and 2.) No, lookit, it’s a fire truck!
The third thing you need to know is that it’s really hard to find definitive specs on these older medium-duty trucks. As far as I can tell, this truck probably has either a 366 or 427 cubic inch gasoline V8 in it, and although the ad lists it as an automatic, there’s a manual gear lever clearly visible in the interior. It’s either a 4 or 5 speed, with a “granny” first gear either way, and possibly a 2 speed rear axle as well.
It’s a hell of a long way from home, I can tell you that: the Brussels-Union-Gardner Fire Department is in Door County in northeastern Wisconsin, and the truck is for sale in the San Francisco Bay area. How did it get there? Was it driven? Are a couple thousand miles of its scant 11,000 mile total from an epic cross-coutry journey somebody made in a decommissioned fire truck? (If so, I’m envious as hell, because that sounds like a lot of fun.)
Look, it’s even still got the pump on the front! And gauges on the top edge of the grille! Does your truck have gauges on the top edge of the grille? Didn’t think so.
Sadly, this wonderful old relic does not run, and has no title. I’m sure there are ways of fixing both of those problems, but then what? You’ve got a kick-ass classic fire truck that you can’t really do anything with, and have to find someplace to park. Rent it out as a movie prop maybe? Drive it in the Fourth of July parade with Miss Small-Town Whatever waving from the back? Just sit and admire it and think, “I have a fire truck?”
I wonder if the siren still works?
1978 AMC Matador “Barcelona” sedan – $1,500
Engine/drivetrain: 360 cubic inch V8, 3 speed automatic, RWD
Location: Stony Brook, Long Island, NY
Odometer reading: 72,973 miles
Runs/drives? Ad says it runs, but also says bring a trailer
Just about as far away from Concord, California as you can get in the US, and jst about as far from an old fire truck as vehicles get, is this last-model-year AMC Matador sedan. It’s the “Barcelona” edition, which as far as I can tell has no connection to the Spanish seaside city. But then, I often wondered what the Spanish-speaking world thought of a car named “Matador” anyway.
This weird, beaky, second-generation of the Matador sedan looked nothing like the sleek personal luxury coupe of the same name. Nicknamed the “coffin-nose,” this car’s honker puts W.C. Fields to shame. However funny-looking, the Matador did well in contemporary road tests and earned praise from the press. Quite a few of them found duty as police cars, and not just on TV.
This Matador is equipped with David’s favorite engine, AMC’s 360 cubic inch V8. By 1978, emissions controls choked down much of the performance that made the early Matadors such effective police cars, but then, nothing was very fast in 1978. The engine is backed by a Chrysler Torqueflite automatic, marketed by AMC as the “Torque-Command.” Whatever you call it, it works.
Inside, where most of the “Barcelona” trim package resides, things look mighty comfy. There isn’t much rust showing on the outside of the body, but a few of the photos show pronounced holes in the floors and in the trunk. Something to check more closely, for sure.
The funny thing about the Matador is that the longer you look at it, the less weird it seems. I’m not sure I’d call it a handsome car, exactly, but when you take a minute to study it, it starts to make sense. Kind of.
So. I don’t know how you begin to compare or contrast these two, but they’re what you’ve got to work with. Discuss, dissect, vote.
The matador is weird but has, I don’t think charm is the word exactly, but maybe a sense of purpose? It’s a big, ugly 70s car in period-correct colors and is less off-putting than most of its contemporaries.
Plus it’s an excuse to purr the word BARRRRTHHHHELONNNAA
$1,000 is very cheap to live out a childhood dream. Firetruck FOR. THE. WIN.
You literally took a page out of my play book, as my garage currently holds both an unloved AMC (a Marlin, in my case) and a retired fire truck. Both options are unique and eye catching, but for practicalities sake I voted Matador; my preference for big, beefy medium duties lean towards the blue oval, and the one heavy Chevy I owned didn’t last the summer in my care. On top of that, my allegiance to AMC goes much deeper than any old fire engine could reach. That said, we need more off the wall choices such as these!
If Mercedes can rock a 67 passenger coach bus, then we should have the opportunity to at least have bragging rights to a $1k firetruck for a SB Showdown.
How could anyone not want a fire truck? It would be perfect in the West these days.
As a long time member of my local volunteer FD, I have no choice but yell FIRE TRUCK with joy. What to do with it? That’s simple.
1. Get it running.
2. Clean up the paint.
3. Install multiple taps on both sides and take that thing to festivals and block parties far and wide.
4. Profit.
Sprecher Brewery here in Milwaukee did exactly that. I see that truck everywhere.
https://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/blog/2014/06/first-day-of-sprecher-s-traveling-beer-garden-a.html
Ah the local VFD in Tarentum PA has a beer Firetruck and uses it for fundraising at festivals. Always the longest line. Not just because being PA you get in one line to buy a ticket then a 2nd to get your free beer for buying a ticket.
Don’t ask it’s Pennsylvania, no dumber than the required airplane bottle liquor at bars.
Went to College in Meadville, PA. The state liquor laws are very strange.
The AMC Matador is such a conundrum. The Matador sedan has to be one of the worst looking cars of the 1970s. However, the Matador coupe is gorgeous. Not sure how that happened to the same model of car.
As for the fire truck, an ice cream shop near my house has one of those super ugly Ford COE fire trucks that they converted into a ice cream truck. It’s rad as heck and kids love it. I see a business opportunity.
In the last couple of years people have been buying their own fire trucks to protect their property from wild fires. https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/People-are-buying-their-own-fire-trucks-15532111.php
I can’t find the article right now, but a person I previously worked for bought a vintage truck and saved his property.
Actually this truck looks more like a pumper truck as opposed to a tanker truck. Didn’t see if it has a water storage capacity.
I think Regular Car Review Reviews said it best in their synopsis of the Ambassador: “AMC Ambassador: if dad get up noise was a car.”
There was a bar in Houston named The Firehouse Saloon which was owned by firefighters and had an old fire truck parked on the grounds, pretty cool to look at. I met the woman I married there. Ironically it burned to the ground.
https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/firehouse-saloon-houston-bar-music-venue-fire-june/285-040000cd-60a0-47dc-8bea-300db00e37b7
Anyway, I voted AMC
+1 for the cool story.
What starts with ‘F’ and ends in ‘U,C,K?’ That’s right, FIRETRUCK!
I am torn between the two. I don’t have a fascination with fire trucks, and the AMC seems like too much sugar for a dime. I guess I’m taking the trap door exit again.
Wow how is Fire Truck not winning. When I saw it was from nearby I got excited, until it turns out it’s not nearby at all 🙁
Matador
And not only because its the cleanest looking 44 year old car under $2000 I’ve seen this year, but also because what the fuck are you gonna do with a fire truck?
What are you going to do with a 44 year old Matador? It’s a freaking FIRE TRUCK!. It is worth 1K just to sit in and make siren noises, but it would not be hard to get back to running condition.
An orphan car is on the menu two days in a row? I like where this is going!
Sadly, this particular orphan car is being hopelessly outshined by that glorious old fire truck. Even if the Matador didn’t have rust holes in the floor pan and trunk, it would be damn near impossible to beat out a fricking fire truck.
AMC Matador.
You can get floor pans or fab ’em, the brakes are almost certainly toasty (hence the bring a trailer,) but it’s otherwise intact, rust free, and easy to obtain engine and transmission parts for.
Fire truck, yeah, no. No matter which engine is in it, you are never finding parts. The truck 427 is nothing like the car version (different casting,) and being a C70 with a PTO, it’s almost certainly going to be a 366, a GMC Toroflow 479 V6, or if you’re really lucky, a Detroit Diesel 4-53. You can almost find parts for a Detroit 4-53. You’re not getting it running in a weekend. You’re probably not getting it running at all without a completely new driveline. Talk about an infinite moneypit.
The 427 truck block is a different casting it has a .400 inch taller deck height than the passenger car big block.
This was to accommodate taller, long skirt pistons. The heads are similar in dimension to the oval port car heads. Quite a lot is interchangeable with the passenger car 427.
For a window in time these were the darlings of big inch stroker motor builders for cars and boats and still might make sense for a big inch “budget” build. In more modern times there are aftermarket replacement tall blocks.
There are intake manifold spacers as an off the shelf item to accommodate car manifolds.
Now the 366 is basically the same thing, but with a smaller bore and that makes it not particularly desirable.
Just sit and admire it and think, “I have a fire truck?”
This is the way.
If you can’t get it running, it would make a hell of a great lawn ornament because who doesn’t love a fire truck?
My son was on a flight one time that was also carrying 20 or 30 Special Olympics competitors. The plane developed some issues and they had to divert to another airport. As they were preparing to land, there was palpable tension on the plane. But then one of the Special Olympians spotted the crash crew assembling below and shouted, with obvious glee and excitement: “Fire Truck!!” Many of the others in his group joined in and soon the entire plane was smiling and laughing about the pure joy of seeing a big, gleaming red fire truck.
It sounds like the ultimate mind **** against a HOA.
How could they possibly argue against a fire truck on your lawn! There’s probably even something in the constitution about it 😀
The Matador, in memory of my Spanish grandfather who was a Torreador deep in the heart of Mexico.
I often drive by decommissioned fire trucks in town, either on back lots or by random houses and my first thought is “WOW! I want a fire truck!”
Then, my 17th thought finally roles around: “Then what? Where do I put it? Where do I drive it? When I get there, where do I park it?
Somebody needs to open up a farm for retired Fire Trucks to live out their final days in peace and harmony together.
There is a brewery/restaurant in the Black Hills that has a bunch of old fire trucks in the yard as their theme, and for hundreds of miles through SD, there are fire trucks sitting in fields along I-90 west as advertisements for this place.
With them putting in that kind of effort, I just had to give their beer a try.
Grew up in the Black Hills, but moved away 35+ years ago..
Never saw this establishment, will definitely look it up next time in the area.
Do you have any more details to share, such as name & location?
Side Note: Today (June 9th 2022) is the 50th anniversary of the great Black Hills Flood.
I was 8 at the time; 238 people perished.
@Dale,
The place I went to was called Fire House Smoke Jumper, in Hill City. I think there may be a larger restaurant in Rapid City as well but the vacation was last year and well, I was drinking beer 🙂
A firefighter friend’s company had a raffle for their oldest truck a few years ago (I think the body dated from ’79 or something; it was only occasionally used in recent times, purely as transport.), something like $100 or $200 for a chance. The caveat, of course, being exactly that–needing a CDL for non-FD use, and parking. They did manage to raise more money than its actual resale value, though.
Local town found an old triumph spitfire in a building they were tearing down. Put it up on muniauction. Had keys not title not running an article in the paper quoted the local head of the triumph group saying he was mystified when the bidding got to $1800. Damn thing sold for over $4000. WTF running spitfire boxes can be had for under $3k.
I got my 1980 Spit for $2,500 in running condition and I kind of felt like I was being generous to the seller.
Because I’m a dedicated AMC fan I’m going with the Matador. That said, as I look at it today I think that last generation Matador was AMC’s signal to the world they just didn’t want to do it anymore.
Fire truck because TMGPA. Also because who doesn’t want to drive a freaking fire truck?! I am also blatantly ignoring all the work it needs.
*TMGPS patiently awaiting edit abilities to be built in here
Lol I highlighted “TMPGA”, it’s a mushroom growers association of some sort? I didn’t click the link. I thought…what? You’re going to use the truck to cultivate mushrooms?
Turn the fire truck into a ramp truck, use it to harvest non-running shitboxen.
See now that is what I think when seeing an old fire truck…how can this be reused?
Check this one out.
https://oklahomacity.craigslist.org/cto/d/cushing-1960-ford-600/7491600065.html
Put a welder on the back of that and make some money. Or carry your tools and race car without a trailer.
It has room for a welder, air compressor, all kinds of stuff. Would be great for an independent mobile mechanic who works on big rigs or equipment, and the truck itself would get him all kinds of attention.
I logged in just to thank you for adding “shitboxen” to my vocabulary.
“Runs” doesn’t necessarily mean “moves,” hence the bring a trailer comment on the AMC.
Went with the fire truck because come on, it’s a fire truck for $1K! Even if you can’t get it moving under its own power, I’m sure someone could find a use for it for a grand. Playground equipment! Movie prop! Yard art!
Fire trucks are heavy.. Probably worth at least $1000 in scrap
FIRE TRUCK!!!
It’s a $1,000 fire truck!! I mean, that’s absolutely a no brainer. And I bet it could be brought back to life in an afternoon between a few cold snacks with your friends.
I’m so glad you’re here! Haha. That is literally what my inner child screamed when I saw the fire truck. I have no idea what I’d do with a fire truck but that’s not the point.
Yes, but, the brown Matador means you can cruise around pretending to be a bad guy from an episode of Kojack. Or Streets of San Francisco, or Columbo (I could go on, but you get my drift). It’s so brown!
Point for Kolchak The night stalker. Used to love it just found it is now on Saturday at Midnight on Antenna or Metv. But you can only watch it no on demand
Neither.
Besides, the only Matador for me is the Matador X…preferably with the Oleg Cassini Interior.