Danville Street Sighting - 1958 Austin-Healey Sprite Mk I

This month in honor of Christmas we're looking at cars with the letter U in their brand name. It's part of my "All I Want For Christmas Is 'U'" series. It's silly, I know. And I hate that Mariah Carey song. But I committed to the bit and we're going to follow through.

They say Santa has to travel all over the world and so will we. This time we're landing in the UK with a 1958 Austin-Healey "Bugeye" Sprite.

Danville Street Sighting - 1958 Austin-Healey 100-6 BN4 Roadster

'Tis the season once more for holiday cheer and I'll try to do my part by featuring fun cars photographed around Christmastime. This one's a lovely blue and white Austin-Healey roadster all dressed up for the season.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1958 Oldsmobile Super 88 Holiday Coupe

I don't make it to San Francisco much anymore. I've been out of college for several years, working full time, and now with the coronavirus pandemic going on I've barely gone anywhere for the past few months. These pictures are two years old but they continue a long-held tradition. When I go to the city I always try to see if our friend Fifties Guy has anything new. This visit was after I participated in my first Radwood car show in South San Francisco, where I shined up and displayed my 1999 Buick Regal GS. I'd already paid the bridge toll to be on the peninsula, so I headed up north for a little while. Sure enough, I was greeted by this all-original 1958 Oldsmobile finished in what I believe to be Champagne Mist Poly.

Danville Street Sighting - 1958 Chevrolet Impala

I needed a theme for this week's posts. In the previous feature of the '46 Ford convertible I mentioned that sometimes I find good cars outside of a repair shop in Danville. So I guess that's what we'll do. Second in the series is this 1958 Chevy Impala.

Livermore Street Sighting - 1958 Edsel Corsair

It's my birthday today, and I decided that I would choose my favorite street sighting from the archives. I love Edsels and after several years of shooting and blogging street-parked cars, here we finally see one. The fact that my birthday falls just before April Fools Day, ties in well with the fact that the Edsel was a costly marketing failure for Ford Motor Company.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1958 Ford Custom 300 Business Sedan

I'm a fan of the Arcane Auto Society car club of Northern California. My second-cousin is a member and I've managed to infiltrate a couple of their annual meets in San Francisco. It usually yields some unique street finds outside of the Cowden Automotive garage, which is too small to hold all of the multitude of oddball tin owned by club members. Is it cheating to shoot there? Maybe. But technically it's not really a car show in the traditional sense (officially it's a business meeting) and cars like this are parked in public street spaces. It's also my blog with my rules and really, what do my readers care if I bend my own arbitrary rules? This is a 1958 Ford Custom 300 Business Sedan.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1958 Nash Metropolitan 1500 Series III

After a succession of several "bad" vintage compact cars that are sort of cool, let's look at one of the early compacts that was a bit of a joke in its own time. This is the second Nash Metropolitan that's appeared here. Both hailed from Alameda, a place that with its 25-mph speed limits appears to be the domain of Model Ts, neighborhood electric vehicles and Nash Metropolitans.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1958 DeSoto Adventurer

Rounding out this week's visit with the San Francisco car collector I like to call Fifties Guy, is perhaps the rarest Mopar in his fleet. This is a 1958 DeSoto Adventurer, the most expensive model in DeSoto's lineup and one of just 432 made. Of those, 350 were coupes as seen here.

Oakland Street Sighting - 1958 Ford Fairlane 500 Victoria

In my early days of researching for interesting local cars, I took to Flickr and found some photos of a blue 1958 Ford in San Francisco with a padlock on the driver-side door. Not since the Mr. Bean TV show had I seen a car with an actual padlock on it. I found where it was photographed but the car wasn't there. Years later I was driving through Oakland on my way back from Berkeley and there it was. It's rough, but it's a pretty cool old beast.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1958 Hillman Husky Series I

This week we're having a look at some cars produced by the Rootes Group in England. Rootes is known in large part for the Sunbeam Alpine sports car, but the company also built a lot of down-to-earth family cars and utility vehicles. This is a late-1950s Hillman Husky van, produced in 1958 or '59.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1958 Packard Hawk

Today marks the final day of another year. For the last post of a dying year, let's examine the last gasp of a dying brand. This is a 1958 Packard Hawk.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1958 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia

Old European cars frustrate me. I hate when I can't correctly place a vehicle's year, or sometimes even the decade of manufacture, because it doesn't have little superficial details so commonly employed on American cars to keep them fresh year after year. Volkswagen used to pride themselves on how little they altered the styling of their cars, and that brings us to this early Karmann Ghia.
The VW Type 14 Karmann Ghia was produced for 19 years, beginning in 1955 and ending in 1974. Like all Volkswagen products of this era, the Ghia was changed just enough to comply with safety regulations and make the car function better. And rightfully so - the car was penned by Ghia and hand-built by Karmann, with a level of style and quality that earned it praise from a number of sources.

Livermore Street Sighting - 1958 Chevrolet Bel Air

Some time ago I put up a poll asking readers for input regarding cars photographed near, but not in, car shows. Most respondents said that any car parked on the street is fair game. Now, I could easily cheat and photograph every old car I see parked near the county fairgrounds when the Goodguys Rod & Custom Association puts on a show. Lots of people bring out their cars but are reluctant to pay Goodguys' entry fee to show their vehicles within the fairground gates. But likewise, I've long been reluctant to call those "street sightings" even though they technically are. Readers can expect to see more cars like this in the future, photographed near (but not in) car shows. To avoid diluting my collection of "legit" sightings, I'm figuring on limiting features like this to no more than one per month. Enjoy!

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1958 Buick Century Riviera

I generally am not known for being a fan of cars made in 1958. Actually, scratch that. I love the 1958 Chevy, Pontiac, Edsel, Plymouth and... umm... Studebaker Hawk, I guess. Most everything else that came out of Detroit or even Europe was too grotesque for my liking. (Okay, the '58 Mercedes SL was nice, but it was largely a carryover from a few years before, and the BMW 507 and Austin-Healeys were all right, too.) Most of GM's 1958 offerings were based on the same platform they'd been on for a few years, and had a family resemblance in their styling. Cadillac did its own thing because it was Cadillac. 1958 Buicks never really got me excited, and Oldsmobile was just plain baroque. Regardless, this Buick was the car that introduced me to the fact that a car collector existed around these parts. The fact that I never managed to properly photograph it the first time kept me coming back for almost two years in the vain hope of finding it again. Finally, in August 2010 I managed to shoot it.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1958 Dodge Custom Royal Regal Lancer D-500

Oooh, night shoot! I actually like how a lot of these photos came out. The story is, I decided one afternoon to head over to Fifties Guy's place and snap more of his cars. Problem was, I was walking from downtown. It was late afternoon, and once I ran smack into the Presidio I realized I had to climb the steep hills of Cow Hollow to get to there. This with a hefty backpack, since I had class earlier in the day. So I finally reached the Inner Richmond as it was getting dark. Too late to shoot cars, right? Voila! Mini tripod.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1958 Plymouth Plaza Silver Special

In the mid-1950s, the cheapest model available from Plymouth was the Plaza. The Plaza existed as a model from 1954 until 1958, slotting beneath the Savoy, Belvedere and Fury. In its final year, the Plaza was offered with a bevy of options, including a two- or four-door Club Sedan body style, Custom station wagon or the truly entry-level (and very rare) Business Coupe which shared the 2-door Club Sedan body but had no back seat. Also for 1958 was a special edition model, the Silver Special. This car came with a silver-painted roof, anodized aluminum "Sportone" side trim and a chrome spear that ran from the front fender to the leading edge of the front door. Badging consisted of an arrow-shaped emblem on the quarter panels symbolizing the "Forward Look" design theme. This replaced the ordinary "Plaza" emblem. Features included whitewall tires, full hubcaps, turn signals, electric wipers, and windshield washers, showing just how basic a standard Plaza really was.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1958 DeSoto Fireflite

I always love it when I'm in the vicinity of Lone Mountain in San Francisco, near the northeast corner of Golden Gate Park. I've mentioned before that a collector lives in that area who owns a host of excellent '50s cars in daily-driver condition. This is one of them. It's a 1958 DeSoto Fireflite four-door sedan.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1958 Mercury Monterey

Remember the '58 Oldsmobile post where I mentioned that 1958 was a weird year for the auto industry, whose designs are often criticized for being really strange? This is pretty much the poster child for "ugly" in 1958. Most will disagree with me and point fingers at the new-for-'58 Edsel, but that's too easy. Besides, I like the Edsel.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1958 Oldsmobile 88

1958 was an odd year for the automobile industry. Throughout the fifties, fins were in, chrome was the norm and bigger was better. But in 1958 something was different: quad headlights. Some cars wore them well (DeSoto), and some did not (Studebaker). Some have criticized the 1958 General Motors lineup of having poor styling compared to the generally good-looking (and only dual-headlight) 1957s. For sure, I wouldn't say that this '58 Oldsmobile 88 is fantastically gorgeous. Far from it. I've never been a big fan of most Olds designs from the '50s (and my favorite '58s are the Chevys and Pontiacs), but personal preferences aside, these cars have their fans.