Danville Street Sighting - 1969 Ford Fairlane 500

 Wow, I have truly been delinquent this year. It's been a good ten months since our last post, but I'm still here and still photographing cars. It's Halloween time, so let's get into the spirit of sorts with a little orange and black. Here's a 1969 Ford Fairlane 500.

Emeryville Street Sighting - 1969 Lotus Elan S4 S/E Drophead Coupe

Any of my readers remember the Lotus Elite I featured in 2016? That wasn't the only car parked on that block that day. I left the Laney College flea market in Oakland on a Sunday morning and cruised over to Emeryville. I found two classic Lotus sports cars and a small warehouse with the roll-up door open. The owner was going to take one of the cars for a drive and needed to move the other in order to get it outside. Here is the Lotus Elan SE roadster.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1969 Plymouth Fury III

It wasn't really my intention to do a theme of Plymouth convertibles this week, but I happened to have a few of them in the archives and I know I have at least one reader who is into '60s Mopars. These aren't the muscle cars people think of, though. Today's feature is a 1969 Plymouth Fury III convertible.

Livermore Street Sighting - 1969 Chevrolet Caprice

March 17 is St. Patrick's Day, a holiday that many Americans use as an excuse to get drunk and pretend they're Irish. That means wearing the color green under threat of being pinched. So here's a green car for your viewing enjoyment, and try not to imbibe too much alcohol.

Livermore Street Sighting - 1969 AMC Javelin SST

Today is Easter, a holiday associated with a number of various symbols depending on how you observe it. Sometimes I like to tie in the most appropriate car I can find for holiday features, so here is a robin's-egg blue 1969 AMC Javelin SST. It has nothing to do with bunnies, marshmallow Peeps or the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but it is a rare car in a good spring color on a holiday known for seeking out hidden pastel eggs. And if you really, really want to associate a javelin with Easter time, read the Bible verses (specifically John 19:34) about what happened on Good Friday, three days before Easter Sunday. Beyond that, this is a car blog and it's not my place to lecture my readers on religion.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1969 MG MGB GT

I've always liked the early models of the MGB. The late ones made after 1971, hobbled by ugly black rubber bumpers and an aerodynamic plastic front end cap, just don't appeal to me. The roadsters are nice, but I really like the MGB GT 2+2.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix Model J

I admit that this generation of the Pontiac Grand Prix isn't my favorite. I like the earlier 1960s models including the '62, '63 and '65. These second-generation cars strike me as a slightly different flavor of the first-generation Chevy Monte Carlo, which is actually not true. The all-new '69 Grand Prix beat the Monte to market by one year, came with different engines and rode on a stretched version of the Monte Carlo's chassis. So while the Monte Carlo made the General Motors "G-body" famous, it was technically the Grand Prix that used it first.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1969 Fiat 124 Sport Coupe

I'm hesitant to photograph Fiats most of the time because all I ever come across are the Fiat 124 Sport Spiders. They're cute little cars and all, but they're common enough that I really just don't care (The same is generally true with the Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce). Then once in a while something different pops up and here we go. This is still a Fiat 124, but it's the unusual 124 Sport Coupe.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1969 AMC Javelin SST

My friends know that in addition to being a big Ford fan, I love American Motors products. And one of my favorite AMCs ever is the 1969 Javelin. The Javelin was AMC's entry in the pony car market in the 1960s and '70s, with flavors ranging from six-banger economy coupe to tire-smoking muscle car. If that formula sounds familiar, it should. AMC was late to the party but the Javelin - particularly the short-wheelbase AMX - could party as hard as most of its competitors.

Danville Street Sighting - 1969 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler Cale Yarborough Edition

I've never been a huge fan of NASCAR. Actually, when I was a kid I liked it somewhat; Dale Earnhardt Sr. was my favorite driver. Then in 2001 he was killed at Daytona and my interest in the sport died with him. But long before stock car racing was generic bodies with restrictor plates and heavily regulated 358 cubic inch V8s running the same official fuel, NASCAR was a very different landscape. One of my favorite race cars is the ridiculous high-winged 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona, a car that could hit 200 mph on a high-speed oval. It was a very tough car to beat. Combating the Daytona was a pair of fastback twins from Ford, the Torino Talledega and Mercury Cyclone Spoiler.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1969 Chevrolet Corvair Monza

Some of my readers by now might be getting sick of Corvairs. Honestly, I've seen a lot of them in San Francisco, and the vast majority to date have been the higher-spec Monza edition. Most have been convertibles, primarily second-generation models made after 1965. So it makes me very happy to see something different. In this case it's a Monza coupe, but not just any coupe. It's a 1969 model. Only 6,000 Corvairs were built in the final year of production, of which 2,717 were Monza coupes.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1969 Plymouth Fury III sedan

Several days ago we looked at a 1969 Plymouth Fury III convertible. Now let's check out another Fury from the same year, but this time it's a big old four-door in an interesting sort of caramel brown color (could be Honey Bronze). This vintage American barge has the same lines as the convertible, but somehow it looks a bit less prestigious despite the luxurious padded top. What do you mean, padded tops aren't luxurious?

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1969 Plymouth Fury III convertible

A lot of people today will easily recognize the 1969 Plymouth Fury, but not necessarily because it's a collectible classic. The fact is, a two-door '69 Fury is a common background prop vehicle in many levels of the popular zombie-shooter video game series Left 4 Dead. There are certainly more of them lying all over the place in that game than there are in the real world.

Petaluma Street Sighting - 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1

I made a promise a long time ago not to feature every Mustang I see. I think I've done a pretty good job of weeding out the generic stuff, but it's also resulted in a distinct lack of ponycars. So I considered it a good score when I spotted a clean red 1969 Mustang Mach 1 parked in the historic district of Petaluma. The '69 Mach 1 is one of my favorite muscle cars and this one has everything: the Magnum 500 wheels, matte black hood with hood pins, 428 Cobra Jet V8 with shaker hood scoop ... the whole car oozes aggression. For the most part it looks stock, though I doubt that the traction bars on the rear are original.

Danville Street Sighting - 1969 Ferrari 365 GT 2+2

I wish I could say that my first classic Ferrari feature was a genuine case of catching Uncle Pennybags on a run to the shops for bread and milk, but alas, this car was parked near a car show. I spotted it parked on the street quite literally just around the corner from the Danville Concours d'Elegance last year. The d'Elegance is a fantastic charity car show put on every September to benefit Parkinson's research and usually attracts some well-heeled car owners, either to enter their cars in the show or to just stop by and check out what's on display.

Best of the Rest 2: Vantastic

1963-67 Volkswagen Type 2 Microbus, Dublin

1965 Chevrolet Sportvan, San Francisco

1969 Dodge A108 Sportsman Family Wagon, San Francisco

1968-70 Chevrolet ChevyVan, San Francisco

1987 Nissan Van, San Ramon

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1969 Buick Riviera

The late 1960s were an interesting time for the personal luxury car in America. It was a time when cars in general were getting huge, engine displacements continued to grow, and these changes altered the entire personality of some of the personal luxury segment. The Buick Riviera, introduced for 1963 with a trim, cleanly designed body by Bill Mitchell, and a 401 or 425 ci Nailhead V8, was a banker's hot rod. It was called one of the most beautiful American cars ever built, by both Sergio Pininfarina and Raymond Loewy.
In 1966, things changed. The Riviera got a redesigned body and shared its chassis with Oldsmobile's Toronado and Cadillac's Eldorado - except for one crucial difference: the Riviera was still rear-wheel-drive as God intended (it would ultimately become FWD in 1979 though). The new Riv got bigger engines to motivate a bigger, heavier car with more seats, huge chrome bumpers and an available vinyl top.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1969 Citroën DS21 Pallas

I've thus far been fortunate to come across not one but three Citroën DSs in San Francisco. Of those, I've been able to photograph two of them in depth. The first was the grey 1970 DS21 I spotted in the Lower Haight, another was a clean black example I caught driving in the east Mission near Potrero Hill (only got one or two shots of that while it was stopped in traffic). And then there was this one, found near the famous twists of Lombard Street on Russian Hill.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1969 Rover TC 2000

I really love stories of people who buy cars new and keep them for a long time instead of replacing them whenever the warranty runs out or a flashy new model comes along. Many owners in our consumer culture bail on their vehicles when they suffer a mechanical problem or the condition declines due to poor maintenance habits. From here the ownership spectrum branches out; some keep the car because they love it, some keep it because they can't afford to replace it.
Happily, this 1969 Rover TC 2000 seems to be a prime example of the former.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1969 Saab 96 V4

Old imported cars are relatively common in the Bay Area, but most are German, Italian or Japanese. BMW 2002s and Alfa Romeo Veloce Spiders are everywhere. Vintage Swedes are also somewhat common, but most of the really old Swedish cars are Volvo Amazons and P1800s. San Francisco's yuppie population embraced Volvo and its fellow Swedish competitor Saab for their quirkiness and safety, and 1980s examples from both brands exist in large quantity.

But where 1960s Volvos survive and thrive in San Francisco, 1960s Saabs do not. Why is that? Were the early Saabs too unusual? Too slow? Too antiquated? The Saab 96 was a design which dated back to 1960, but the Volvo Amazon dated back to the mid-1950s. And the Volkswagen Beetle, the best-selling imported car in the US at the time, was first developed in 1938. Over half a million 96s were ultimately built over 20 years. Over 667,000 Amazons and some 21 million Beetles were built. So the Saab was rarer to start with, and was likely only a niche model in the US, making parts and service harder to come by.