Old Sacramento Street Sighting - 1952 Chevrolet Styleline DeLuxe

I usually like to do something special for my Christmas feature. I visited Old Sacramento with a friend last December when the historic area was all decorated for the holidays. We encountered this lovely gray 1952 Chevy sedan parked in front of a shop. I liked the building's festive decorations so it seemed appropriate for today. Enjoy.

Danville Street Sighting - 1952 Chrysler New Yorker

That thing got a Hemi? Yep.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1952 Ford F-1 Pickup

Some of the most interesting vehicles turn up when I'm not actively carspotting. I was with a friend in San Francisco, searching for parking near the Cable Car Museum when we happened upon this '52 Ford pickup. Ultimately we did find street parking and managed to visit the museum, but not before I took a moment to shoot the old truck.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1952 Kaiser Manhattan

When you're the little guy, you have to stand out or you disappear. By "disappear", either you end up blending in or you fail in your endeavor completely. Such is the case among independent car manufacturers and even the mainstream ones. The Chevy-Ford rivalry is well-known for decades as each takes turns trying to outdo the other with styling, interior or powertrain changes depending on how much money is available for the updates at any given time. GM and Ford usually have a lot of cash at their disposal for developing new cars, though. A small company like Kaiser-Frazer was on a shoestring budget and relied heavily on proven technology and a highly skilled styling team.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1952 Kaiser DeLuxe

Henry J. Kaiser made an indelible mark on America in the mid-20th century. His shipyards built thousands of Liberty cargo ships to keep Allied forces supplied during World War II; and his healthcare company, Kaiser Permanente, saved thousands of lives and continues to do so today. Many people might forget that Kaiser also ran a car company.

Dublin Street Sighting - 1952 Hudson Wasp

This week, in honor of Paul Newman's birthday, I'm featuring all Hudson cars. Newman, among many other things, was famous for his work in Disney/Pixar's Cars movie as the voice of Doc Hudson, a 1951 Hudson Hornet coupe.

Hudson is best known for the Hornet, a car that managed to win four consecutive NASCAR championships with a 308 cubic inch six-cylinder in a field of V8s. The famous Hudson Twin-H Power option debuted in late 1951 and bolstered the Hornet's reputation both on the street and on the track. It was one of the fastest, best-handling cars of the early 1950s.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1952 Dodge B-2B Job Rated Pickup

GMC likes to market itself as "Professional Grade". That tagline implies that GMC trucks are built to work hard and will hold up under the stress of whatever job they do. This kind of statement is nothing new. As long as the truck could reasonably live up to the claim, manufacturers would trumpet it loudly. And some even bolted that claim onto the front of their trucks. Long before Dodge spun its truck line off to become RAMs, they built these, the Job-Rated B-Series pickup.

Job Rated was a term coined in 1939 to describe a range of Dodge trucks built for a spectrum of jobs. Lighter duty trucks would serve general pickup use, all the way up to big commercial rigs hauling or towing heavy payloads. Dodge introduced all-new trucks for 1948 with the B Series, beginning with the B-1. These trucks were improved over the pre-war design that, while visually interesting, was woefully outdated by the time it was phased out. The 1948-1953 trucks, in my opinion, are not the prettiest things out there. However, they do have a certain toughness to them.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1952 Citroën 11CV Traction Avant

Every once in a while a car comes along that I genuinely don't know much about at all. I research the heck out of it to try to determine what it is. Usually it's an obscure European model that wasn't changed much during a long production run. Sometimes it's a car that was rare to start with in the American market and is only more rare now. And sometimes it's French.