I just did my first official car-spotting video in Los Angeles, choosing the San Fernando Valley — home of Galpin Motors — as the first location. What I discovered was a wonderful variety of vintage, rust free cars, and also one very obvious stand-out: old Chevy trucks. They are everywhere!
It was only fitting that I chose my 1989 Chevy K1500 for this car-spotting adventure. I pulled the park brake release, fired up that 350 V8, slid the five-speed into gear, and headed off down Roscoe Boulevard before turning north into the various neighborhoods of Van Nuys.
It’s a concrete suburban jungle, with single family homes, multi-family homes, apartments, condos, and strip malls all over the place. There’s also a humongous automotive presence in the San Fernando Valley. A not-insignificant fraction of that presence owes its existence to Galpin, with body shops, tint shops, tire shops, detailing shops, and all sorts of supporting architecture surrounding the dealership. But the San Fernando’s industrial presence stretches well past Galpin Square. There are tons of trades-businesses — locksmiths, steel suppliers, pool suppliers, home gate suppliers, and on and on.
The valley is where things get made, and it’s one of the hardest working parts of LA, which is why I shouldn’t have been surprised to find what I did when Griffin and I set off on this car-spotting trip.
It was Chevy trucks galore. Square-bodies, Blazers, S10s, GMT400s — Tahoes, Suburbans, K1500s, C1500s. You name the Chevy truck, it’s there in the San Fernando Valley either being used for hard labor or just an enthusiast’s truck.
That’s not to say there aren’t Ford and Dodge trucks — there are. But in terms of old vehicles, a strangely disproportionate number of them appear to be old Chevrolet pickups and SUVs. Here are just some of the vehicles I saw during our one-hour car-spotting adventure:
Of course, there was much more on the streets. What I’ve learned since moving to LA is that, unlike in Michigan, when you see an old car like the VW Westfalia below, that’s not necessarily someone’s collector-car. It could very well just be someone’s daily driver.
I still have my Michigan goggles on, so I still see these and think “a car nut must own that,” but that simply isn’t necessarily the case in California.
This owner of this old Chevy Fleetline is definitely a car-nut, though: 
Look at this cool old Datsun:
California has the highest concentration of BMW i3s in America — behold the carbon fiber wonder from Leipzig:
Japanese car culture is alive and well in LA, though not really as prominent as I thought it would be:
Check out this clean XJ:
I spotted quite a few old Benzes:
Here’s a Ford truck:
Old Camrys are everywhere. These things just keep going and going and going, and with no rust to threaten their existence and no moisture to ruin ball joints and wheel bearings, there’s really little reason to throw these cars away even 25 years in:
I do have to mention the mini trucks, because California is the home of the wild Mini-truck culture that brought us “Dancing beds.” Even 30-40 years on, mini trucks still abound, and are often used for hard labor. 
Below you can have a look at a few more the cars I saw during my 60 minute cruise in my beloved GM400 Chevy K1500. It was a completely impromptu 60-minute video shoot, but it does give a bit of insight into just how much vintage stuff just keeps hanging on in Southern California.
Still, it’s those Chevy trucks that have me most impressed. How can there be that many within just a few blocks in the San Fernando Valley? I’m amazed.
So…did you find the rust, or did the rust find you?
lol
great article. this is good Oppo!
When I moved to LA for a stint about 20 years ago, my now SO sold their rusted-out Subaru and moved out to Cali with me. With the $2500 they got for the Subaru back home, we found a perfectly clean ’87 BMW 325 convertible. Warm silver exterior and dark red interior. It was a beautiful to look at as it was to drive. The only down side was the top was toast. The thing is, we didn’t care. We had a garage and being LA we never needed the top. We only replaced it before we shipped the car back with us when we headed back “home.”
The guy we bought the BMW from lived in the valley and was a great guy. He was in his 30s and had two Citroen DSs, two Peugeot 505 Turbos, and one Renault 4. Al were in great condition. He was getting rid of the BMW because he wanted a second Renault 4. He said the 505s were much better to drive than the BMW but harder to keep going, mainly due to parts availability. Parts issues is why he decided he needed two of everything. It allowed him to wait for parts sent from Europe and still have a working version of each car.
If every car in those pics was parked on my street in PHL, they would have a little “Cash For Cars” pamphlet shoved under the wiper in minutes.
I see a lot more old Chevy/GMC trucks here in rural Maryland than you’d expect, too. Just today, driving mine to the grocery store and back (10 mile round trip), I saw two other old GMT400s. They’re hard to kill and easy to fix, so they stick around a long time.
You should come visit Sonoma County, man. Our “cars and coffee” (2nd Sunday, Codding Town Mall here in Santa Rosa). Trucks are an art form up here in agricultural country. Takes a lot of trucks to grow all those grapes, apples and weed, man.
Nice pics. I especially like the avocado green squarebody complete with camper. A word on mini-trucks: even here in the Midwest I still occasionally see old “custom” trucks, long retired from the high life but still doing duty as somebody’s work vehicle. It’s sad if you anthropomorphize to much, but it’s cool that they’ve survived.
I think part of the reason chevy trucks tend to be more represented is because chevy (in my experience) has much more parts commonality compared to other brands (especially ford). The ease of finding parts without having to cross reference by factory or half years has seen me switch from ford/jeep to Chevy over time.
The most amazing part of this to me is that you didn’t end with “And then the police stopped us for questioning.” Two guys in an old truck cruising around taking pictures of homes and vehicles would absolutely attract the attention of residents ready and willing to call in suspicious activity, or shoot first ask questions later.
In the San Fernando Valley? You must be kidding, everybody thinks they are location scouts.
Not gonna lie, I loved that 70s era green Toyota Corolla you saw at the beginning of your video. Those were everywhere when I was a kid in the 70s.
Is funny, round here there are my silly car cars, Harry down the way, his cars are fun. Mainly minis, proper ones, rally prepped and good. The Escorts and Subarus are cool too. (his day job is agricultural plant hire, weird stuff like side cutting combines and pea harvesters ) The bloke yont the cleugh has a quintet of microcars and a couple of pre-war Bentleys. There are series Land rovers and still the odd Subaru pick up working for a living. It must be something in the water, it is exciting to see a car built in this century!
Three words, my friend: Low. Load. Height.
I shall continue to beat that LLH drum until manufacturers get back to sensible bed heights or until I find a decent Mazda B-series.
So much this. I’m late Gen-X and was a Boy Scout. You could reach over the sides or reach in the bed of a Squarebody GM or OBS Ford as a teen.
Loading a motorcycle into my 2000 F150 is a vastly different proposition than loading one into my old 88 Toyota I had before the Ford. The bumper on the Ford is about the height of the top of the bed rails on the Toyota.
It’s a base 2WD Ford. Why’s it gotta be so tall?
My wife’s uncle has a B11 Sentra that needs some wrenching work to pass smog and I’m tempted to rescue it
#savethesentra
No surprise seeing the number of old Toyotas. Since rust is not an issue, it would NOT be an issue to keep them running….
All of those cars sighted have pretty close reliability AS LONG AS YOU TAKE CARE OF THEM…
My sister bought a new Camry in 1986. I saw one (in Chicago, no less!) of the same vintage in 2016. Must have had the Energizer bunny running it.
Rust, and only rust, kills these cars.
When I left the service for civilian life, I first caught on with a small government contractor that had facilities on the East and West coasts. The West Coast facility was in the San Fernando Valley. On my first company trip out there, I was riding around (in a Chevy pickup) with the vice-president who ran the operation out there and I noticed an overwhelming number of Chevy trucks and compact trucks. This was nearly 40 years ago and San Fernando was well into its transition from a primarily citrus agriculture economy to a heavily industrialized suburban base. The VP told me the Chevy truck thing came from all of the Mexican migrants and immigrants who settled in the valley during its farming heyday. They were partial. to Chevys (trucks and cars) and their children and grandchildren followed suit. Compact trucks were popular with service companies and workers because they were cheap , economical and reliable. It was part of the culture he told me. I might have been skeptical except the VP was a second generation Mexican American – son of farm workers – and we were riding around in his ‘72 Chevy C20. Gotta believe the man knew what he was talking about.
I can vouch for that. It’s the same in up here in Stockton and Tracy. (wait till David finds out there is an entire city named after him. My grandparents moved here from Van Nuys in 1929)
Oh, and it’s pronounced “Cheby”
For a little more perspective for those not familiar with the area…The “San Fernando Valley” houses almost 2 million people, likely close to at least that many cars and encompasses 260 square miles and 38 cities/towns/communities, all of which simply run into one another. Galpin Motors is in fact in one city that’s within it but so are multiple other Ford dealers (at least a dozen, maybe more?). It’s also the site of Valley Girl, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Licorice Pizza and hundreds (thousands?) of other movies, TV shows, etc.
If you drive around long enough you’ll likely spot an example of every car ever made anywhere…As well as some you never knew about.
Agreed!
I have a photo of my grandmother standing right about where the 405 is between Victory and Vanowen in Van Nuys, in probably the 1910s on her parents farm and there is one house in the distance about a mile away.
They had about a square mile of walnut trees.
Them big old 3+3s you posted are awesome and thir$ty trucks. Looks like they’re still putting in hard work!! And despite what has been written, the 3+3 shows how modern, same configuration trucks really haven’t gotten much larger from trucks years back.
I walk by one on a regular basis where I live in RI, the thing is enormous. The height isn’t comparable to today’s trucks, but the width and length has got to be damn near the same. Being lower, the truck probably looks longer than what it is.
Agreed. 4wd examples raise them up somewhat, but still not a tall as the current Silverados with the aggressive front end.
In my Western town of 1,500 there are 8 AMC Era CJs. 4 are just sitting on the street (including mine). This isn’t counting the ones that are out working the ranches. These things just come out of the woodwork here. Hell, I know of 2 Rambler Rebels too.
Friends and neighbors talk to other friends and neighbors… My buddy LOVES fixing up old 4×4 Corollas. Why? IDK, but the town went from 0 to 4 and they keep increasing. He just found 20 in the back corner of a ranch one town away, so I guess I’m going to be seeing more while helping him wrench.
Sounds like heaven.
Looking forward to seeing the full carspotting video. The one where you went to buy the K1500 was entertaining and contained lots of wholesome truck details.
Las Vegas, also being The Land That Rust Forgot™, is somewhat similar. Probably 65-70% of the C/K-10 squarebodies I see are driven by enthusiasts and preservationists, with the balance still working for a living.
It gets more interesting when you move up to the C/K-30 chassis cabs with bespoke bodies. There are still TONS of them working for a living. Wreckers, glass/mirror trucks, service bodies, etc. are all still out there, earning their keep.
In Kuwait and Qatar, 30-40 year old Chevrolet Trucks are still in service in severe duty applications…as of 2024…
This is also just literally any town in the Midwest.