Latest Cars Reviews Blog: 1969

What's a reasonable price for a cool old car? Our readers are cold-eyed realists, or maybe you're all just plain cheapskates, and the last Nice Price vehicle was the 1979 Dodge Shag Van.

Today we're going to consider a car that's been generating tips for about a year now; the seller just won't give up, and we've lost count of the number of times readers have tipped us on it. It's an undeniably awesome machine: a Czech station wagon! It's in very nice condition and includes all the original manuals, keys, the works. The seller had it priced much higher for quite a while, but now the price has come down to $5,000 (Bring A Trailer has done a good job of tracking this car's asking prices since it's been on sale). It costs about $2,000 to get a car shipped over from the Czech Republic- I know, because I'm considering doing so myself- and you could probably get a nice Octavia Combi over there for a couple grand… but this one is already DMV-approved and its papers are in order, thus enabling you to avoid an intensely Czech experience during the registration process. What do you think?
[Craigslist San Francisco, go here if the ad disappears]

Five thousand bucks for a 1969 Skoda Octavia?
( polls)

Welcome to Down On The Street, where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. It's Mustang time again, and we're on our eleventh so far in the series, after this '65 GT, this '65, this '66, this '66, this '68, this '69 fastback, this '73 convertible, this '76, this '86 SVO, and this '86 LX.

Since we've seen only one first-gen Camaro so far, there's been a lot of speculation about why so many more Mustangs are still on the street; sure, more Mustangs were sold, but not by this kind of margin. The consensus seems to be that first-gen Camaros are simply worth more than first-gen Mustangs, partly because the insane power-per-dollar ratio of the small-block Chevy engine made it that much easier for bemulleted hoons to destroy Camaros back in the 1970s.

This Mustang is in great shape for a street-driven transportation car; it would get scoffed at by the show judges, but we don't care. We might not choose these wheels or the gold stripes for our own vintage Ford, but there's nothing too ridiculous here.