Saturday, November 5, 2011

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1966 Chrysler Newport

It was a gloomy, wet day when I drove three friends around San Francisco looking for filming locations from the atrocious Tommy Wiseau film "The Room". For whatever reason they love the movie, and came up from Los Angeles to see the places where certain scenes were filmed. One such building, a flower shop which appeared briefly in the film (the establishment is now a pizza parlor), was located in the Mission District. Some time before, I'd heard about a small collection of old Chrysler products in the area. I hoped that I'd be able to find them that same day. As it were, my friends and I drove right past the small alley where the cars reside.
Some time later, when the weather had improved, I took a walk in the Mission to try to find them again. This time I got lucky. Being that the alley is paved and has a name on a sign installed by the city, I assume that makes it a public street and therefore fair game. The first vehicle I saw from this collection, and possibly my favorite, was this Daffodil Yellow 1966 Chrysler Newport sedan.



Newport was Chrysler's entry level car for 1966, yet it was a large car with standard 383 ci V8 power, automatic transmission (with choice of column or floor shift) and a variety of available body styles. Nearly 75,000 of these pillared four-door sedans were built, by far the most popular Newport variant.
This car is a decent driver, with a good body mostly free of damage. There's a little bit of rust around the edges where the paint has come off or cracked, but from 20 feet away the car looks surprisingly clean. I'm particularly impressed by the condition of the bumpers and chrome trim. The only thing that bothers me is the unusual leopard-print back seat covering.
Expect to see other cars from this collection at a later date.

1 comment:

  1. Hmm Leopard skin back seat covering sound like some kind of *ahem* recreation room on wheels was there any evidence of whips or handcuffs ?

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