Danville Street Sighting - 1973 Plymouth Satellite

Remember the Plymouth Satellite? Lots of folks don't. But I do.

Danville Street Sighting - 1973 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray

June 7 marks the birthday of a singer-songwriter from Minneapolis you may have heard of. His name is Prince.

In his honor and in his memory, here's a little red Corvette.

Saratoga Street Sighting - 1973 Ford Mustang Grande

In the past I've said a few times here, that just because I love the Ford Mustang doesn't mean I'll post a lot of them. It has to speak to me or at least be uncommon or interesting to make the cut. Here's the luxury spec from the Boxstang generation, the Grande.

Pleasanton Street Sighting - 1973 Dodge Royal Sportsman

My last post here dealt with a 1973 Ford Econoline van. In that post I mentioned that Ford's van sales were down that year. Now we look at its primary nemesis in the marketplace, the Dodge B-Series. I see this fantastic Royal Sportsman passenger van on the road often in my area, much more often than I ever see it parked. This van even popped up in traffic while shooting the 1957 Austin-Healey 100-6.

San Ramon Street Sighting - 1973 Ford Econoline E-100

Many moons ago I used to enjoy going to K-B Toys at my local mall. I was a budding diecast collector who loved the Johnny Lightning brand of 1:64 scale collectibles but could rarely find or afford them. Luckily for me, K-B Toys used to put them on sale periodically at the unheard-of price of three cars for $5. This was around the time that JL produced their Boogie Vans series of 1970s custom vans. I picked up some good stuff for dirt cheap. I fell in love with a couple of the Boogie Vans, namely a metallic blue 1977 Dodge B-150 with American flag graphics, and a white 1977 Ford Econoline 150 decorated as a dealership parts chaser. My small assortment of diecast vans helped foster an appreciation of vintage custom vans as more than an old steel box full of dirty carpet left over from the disco era.

Danville Street Sighting - 1973 Triumph TR6 Roadster

It's autumn and the weather is getting cooler. A lot of my readers from back east are seeing early snows and even sunny California is getting rainy weather. So for all of you in colder climes, how about we look at some convertibles? Not just any convertibles, but classic red British roadsters.
First up is this Carmine Red Triumph TR6.

Oakland Street Sighting - 1973 AMC Javelin SST

This is Independents' Week, a recurring feature here on California Streets around the 4th of July, celebrating cars from independent American manufacturers. That means no Big Three cars from Ford, General Motors or Chrysler. This is a 1973 (or possibly '74) AMC Javelin.

I used to hate all second-generation Javelins made between 1971 and 1974. I hated the big flared fenders mostly, and they struck me as just strange to look at. This one changed all that.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1973 Pontiac Le Mans Sport Coupe

For most car brands, 1973 wasn't a banner year. It's memorable mainly for bad things, like the OPEC oil crisis and the beginning of federal 5-mph bumper standards. A lot of cars that year were retreads of 1970 or '71 models. For General Motors, 1973 brought the introduction of the midsize A platform's all-new "Colonnade" body. Colonnade refers to the style of roof pillars GM employed to allow frameless door glass without building a traditional hardtop. This was intended to allow the car to perform better in a rollover crash. The change was sort of a big deal since it meant a new Chevelle, new Olds Cutlass, new Buick Century and new Pontiac Le Mans. All of these models were huge volume sellers so getting them right was important. All mainstream Pontiac midsize models were now badged as Le Mans, with such option packages and styles as Luxury Le Mans, Le Mans Sport, Le Mans Safari (wagons), and for more adventurous buyers a GTO or new "European-styled" Grand Am could be specified. The Grand Prix luxury coupe was also based on the Le Mans this year.

Pleasanton Street Sighting - 1973 Ford Pinto

The first thing viewers may notice about this shoot is that the lighting varies wildly among the pictures. Yes, it does. I shot this car basically three times on two different days, several months apart with two different cameras. Now that we're past that, this is one cool little Pinto.

Oakland Street Sighting - 1973 Chevrolet Caprice Classic

What?! A 1973 Caprice that's not a lowrider or a donk? Hold the phone!

Actually, it's not that unheard of. Chevrolet built literally 800,000 of their big cars in 1973, and the luxury-oriented V8 Caprice accounted for 212,754 of them. That's pretty impressive for a full-size car today, with that segment of the (retail) market shrinking with each passing year. Chevy sold about 160,000 Impalas in the US and Canada last year, and you probably rented one of them. Back in 1973 though, a full-size car was still pretty much a fact of life and it was what you drove if you had a family of four or more. Yup, right up until that pesky OPEC oil embargo left you and all your neighbors waiting around the block for gas.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1973 Toyota Corona Mark II

If you're a fan of old Hong Kong action movies, you've probably seen
some Toyota Corona Mark IIs ramping through the air and getting smashed into other nondescript Japanese compacts as collateral damage from a car chase. Or perhaps you spotted one of these as highway traffic in an episode of CHiPs. But apart from period TV footage, these cars don't appear to have survived in significant numbers. I was pretty excited to see this one on what Murilee Martin (of Jalopnik and The Truth About Cars) called the "Island the Rust Forgot", Alameda.

Hayward Street Sighting - 1973 Buick Electra 225 Limited

The word "Limited" connotes a variety of different things. Limited production indicates exclusivity, limited options indicates few available extras or choices, limited capability indicates that something is not very good at what it does, limited top speed means governed so it cannot go any faster. In every case, there is a limit which keeps there from being too much or too many of something. It makes the term popular for use on the most luxurious trim level of an automobile whose intent is to at least make you think your neighbors won't all have one.

Oakland Street Sighting - 1973 Lincoln Continental

Lincoln is known for its traditional American approach to luxury. Lincolns typically are big, softly sprung cars with thick, overstuffed couch seats and convenience options that appeal to old people. The package may include a padded vinyl top, hood ornament, whitewall tires and full hubcaps. And in the 1970s, it seems Lincoln's running gimmick was hideaway headlamps. Virtually every Lincoln had the vacuum-operated headlight doors, as did many fullsize Ford LTDs and Mercury Marquis. It added a little uniqueness to an otherwise slab-sided car whose only curves were the wheel arches and the little kick up in the beltline at the C-pillar.

Danville Street Sighting - 1973 Volkswagen Type 181 Thing

Back in May I featured a 1974 Volkswagen Thing from Alameda, the place Murilee Martin of The Truth About Cars (formerly of Jalopnik) dubbed The Island That Rust Forgot. Now we're looking at another Thing, which I think is a 1973 model.

San Ramon Street Sighting - 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale Holiday sedan

Not many old cars become local celebrities. This can change, of course, if they become known for being associated with a colorful local figure or have a fascinating past, or are just distinctive enough that they attract all manner of art students and photographers who think they look cool.

Santa Cruz Street Sighting - 1973 Volvo 1800ES

If I asked to you name a Volvo sport wagon, chances are you'll come up with the 850 T-5R wagon, or perhaps the later V70R. But the first sporty Volvo wagon was actually more of a shooting brake, a two-door affair intended as a send-off for the aging but much loved P1800 sports coupe. I've previously featured a P1800 coupe and even done a "Best of the Rest" post on five others. But this is the first 1800ES wagon I've had the chance to shoot in detail. Given the rarity of the ES, of which only 8,078 were built between 1972 and 1973, I'm glad I did.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale Holiday sedan

Rounding out this week's trio of beat-up 1970s Oldsmobiles is a 1973 Eighty-Eight Royale Holiday four-door hardtop. If you're familiar with the work of director Sam Raimi, you may know that he owns a yellow 1973 Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight sedan. The car featured rather prominently in the Spider-Man film as Uncle Ben's personal vehicle. This is not that car!
I have to ask: why aren't big family cars offered in cheerful colors like this anymore? If anything, it would give more people reason to refer to their car as the Banana Boat. There aren't many ordinary cars that wear the color yellow very well, but I actually like it on this one. Most family cars these days are beige or some greyscale tone between white and black. It's boring. Then again, the last custom-painted yellow late-model Honda Accord I saw looked stupid.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1973 Cadillac Superior Hearse

Last year I marked the occasion of Halloween with a car named after the Spanish word for 'devil', a Lamborghini Diablo. This year I have no Dodge Demons or Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts or monster trucks. What I do have is a vintage Cadillac hearse.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1973 Mercury Comet

I usually prefer to go my own way in choosing what appears on my blog, but the inspiration for it remains Murilee Martin's Down On The Street series of posts on Jalopnik. He confined his focus to cars parked on public streets on the island of Alameda just south of Oakland. When I began blogging, I stayed out of Alameda because I didn't want to invade a fellow car blogger's turf. I got lots of good stuff in San Francisco because I was going to school there. Since Murilee Martin now lives in another state, I enjoy making the occasional trip to Alameda in the hope of finding something new. In some cases I stumble upon one of Murilee's old finds.
I was driving through town with two friends who wanted to see the Pacific Pinball Museum (I've told that story before; it was the day I spotted the green '55 Chevy 210). It was late in the day and we wanted to get there before the place closed, so I bypassed an apparently clean red Ford Maverick. As I got closer and then drove past, I saw that it was actually a Mercury Comet. I've only seen maybe five of these 1970s Comets in the last several years. The next time I was in Alameda, I managed to find the car again and take pictures.

Santa Cruz Street Sighting - 1973 BMW 3.0S

Nowadays the BMW 7-Series is one of the standard choices in the luxury sedan class. But 40 years ago BMW was only a bit player in the United States, known primarily for motorcycles and the 2002 coupe and occasional sales of a four-door sedan based on the 2002's "New Class" platform. Buyers looking for a luxury coupe could get the E9 CS, either as the 2800CS or later the 3.0CS. The E9 was developed from the New Class, and in the late 1960s it gained a stablemate in the form of the New Six (E3) six-cylinder large luxury sedan.