San Francisco Street Sighting - 1979 Peugeot 504 Break Diesel

Today is Bastille Day, a very big holiday in France that commemorates the storming of the Bastille fortress-prison in 1789. It was a turning point in the French Revolution and is celebrated as a symbol of national unity for the French people. So in recognition of that, today we feature a French car.

Livermore Street Sighting - 1979 Ford Ranchero GT

I don't know what it was about the 1970s, but someone decided maroon and gold looked good together on cars. I don't mean to offend any Arizona State or House Gryffindor fans, but when I was a kid, I did not like the combination. In 1980 my dad bought a 1966 Mustang convertible that had been repainted maroon and gold. I suppose it's a classic color combination for clothing and such, but on that car I hated it. This '79 Ranchero came from the factory like that. Except on this vehicle, it's not plebeian maroon. It's Cordovan.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1979 AMC Concord D/L

Welcome back to Independents' Week, where we observe America's Independence Day with a look at old and interesting cars from independent American manufacturers. That means nothing from Ford, General Motors or Chrysler.

Danville Street Sighting - 1979 Ford Thunderbird Town Landau

In my previous feature we looked at a 1956 Ford Thunderbird, which debuted a few years after Elvis Presley got into the rock 'n roll scene. Now we look at a 1979 Thunderbird, a car that was built a couple of years after Elvis died. And much like Elvis, the Thunderbird was immensely popular from the start and they both got very fat around the same time. Unlike Elvis, though, the Thunderbird survived for another few decades thanks to a series of total reinventions.

Danville Street Sighting - 1979 Chrysler New Yorker

The R-platform cars are not often regarded as a high point in Chrysler's history. To some observers, it's a miracle that Chrysler has survived this long, what with a long succession of great cars, terrible cars, apathetic cars and a lot of strange decisions in design and marketing. In the latter half of the 1970s, Chrysler was in deep trouble. General Motors rolled out an all-new fullsize car platform for 1977 that was shared across all of its core passenger car brands. Chrysler management often used a wait-and-see approach for market trends -- if something worked for GM and Ford, Chrysler would usually follow. In 1978, Chrysler dumped their Dodge and Plymouth C-body fullsize lines, leaving only luxury-minded Chrysler to peddle big cars. In '79 the R-body appeared, a reworked midsize B-body with smaller engines, a three-inch stretch and over a quarter ton of weight loss. The platform was old, the engines were old, but the company was on the verge of bankruptcy and did their best with a small budget. This car would serve as Chrysler's big sedans for all three divisions through 1981.

Los Angeles Street Sighting - 1979 Lincoln Continental Mark V

Okay, full disclosure. This car belongs to my friend, who purchased it in L.A. a few years ago for $600 to save it from being crushed. These photos were taken the first time I ever laid eyes on it. This is also perhaps the only street sighting to date which I've actually ridden in.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1979 Ford LTD 2-Door Sedan

When I was a kid I saw a lot of the boxy 1979-1991 Ford Panther platform cars. FoMoCo sold a ton of LTDs, Crown Victorias, Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln Town Cars, and their Ford Country Squire and Mercury Colony Park wagon variants. What I didn't realize though, for a long time, was that Ford sold a coupe version (actually a two-door sedan) of the LTD/Crown Victoria. And what took me the longest to figure out, was that for the first few years of production there were two different front ends offered. Base models received a two-headlight front clip with its own unique eggcrate grille and turn signals mounted inside the grille. Fancier Landaus and Crown Victorias got quad headlamps placed on top of large amber blinkers. This base LTD became the LTD-S in 1980 and lost the hood ornament seen on this '79 car. Note the free-standing side mirrors (passenger side is a non-factory replacement) and funky 1970s holdover hubcaps. Those caps were apparently still used until 1983 -- in my opinion they looked dated on day one.

Vacaville Street Sighting - 1979 Chevrolet Corvette L-82

Take a look at any list of the worst Corvettes or worst sports cars and you might see a late-model C3 generation 'Vette in there somewhere. Circa 1980 the C3 Corvette was a hopelessly old, increasingly plasticky sport coupe with no convertible option and low-performance variants to comply with California's draconian emissions standards. In 1980 it was not possible to buy a Corvette in California with a manual transmission, a 350 cubic inch engine, or a horsepower rating of 200 or more. A 305 making 180 hp and a three-speed auto was all you got. And an 85-mph speedometer. Dark days indeed, and yet the thing sold like hotcakes. The year this car was built, 1979, was Corvette's all-time best sales year. Maybe buyers saw what was coming.

San Ramon Street Sighting - 1979 Honda Accord CVCC

In all my time publishing this blog I didn't think I'd get excited over a Honda Accord. It's that well-built, milquetoast family sedan that everybody and their brother, aunt, next-door neighbor and best friend will own at least one of in their lifetime. The average Accord performs its function with little drama, little character and is just... there. And yet, here's an Accord that has to be the cleanest one of its age I've seen in years. Most Accords give their owners a decade or two of reliable service, and then they have problems. And the owners frequently aren't car people, so when something breaks that's too expensive to fix, or the car is too old to be fashionable anymore, it goes to the junkyard.

Oakland Street Sighting - 1979 Ford Pinto Cruising Wagon

For a long time I had a Ford Pinto Cruising Wagon on my list of cars I wanted to find and shoot. Really, any surviving Pinto is special to me, but I love the wagons and the silly disco-era Cruising Wagon is just cool in its own goofy way. Who wouldn't want a four-cylinder compact wagon with all the custom touches of a full-size panel van? Sure, you can't fit a queen-size bed in the back of a Pinto wagon, but it has the porthole bubble window, tape stripes and maybe a roll of shag carpeting. Finishing the package are slotted forged aluminum wheels and rear window slats, the latter for keeping the interior cool or perhaps affording privacy to intimate contortionists. Unsurprisingly the car was marketed to surfers and young people.

Berkeley Street Sighting - 1979 Replicars Phaeton

For me part of the thrill of car blogging is trying to discover the model year of an obscure car and stumbling upon the history of that actual car. Rare cars tend to have well-connected owner's groups with a registry. I like to see what I can dig up to give myself and my readers a more complete picture of what they're looking at.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1979 Cadillac Coupe DeVille

I'm not a huge fan of Cadillacs. Growing up, one of the most common and stereotypical Caddies was a 1977-1992 Fleetwood Brougham. It was traditional American luxury in the chintziest way. The body was big and old-fashioned, sitting on a full frame with super-floaty suspension and wire hubcaps and a padded landau top, all driving home the belief that this was a luxury car. Inside you got your typical complement of leather and fake wood in a color that tried to match or compliment the exterior paint. Top it off with whitewalls and color-contrasting pinstriping and you have the perfect car for the senior citizen of the '80s. By the time I was growing up, many were reduced to faded, broken second-hand daily transportation or pimped out cars for ballers on a budget. Cash For Clunkers killed off a slew of these cars, making them less common now.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1979 Plymouth Sapporo

If this car looks and sounds Japanese it's because it is. It's a 1979 Plymouth Sapporo, one of Chrysler's "captive imports" that resulted from a deal with Mitsubishi. Many smaller Chryslers, Dodges and Plymouths of the late 1970s and 1980s were badge-engineered Mitsubishi products. The Sapporo and its Dodge twin, the perhaps ironically named Challenger, were based on the Mitsubishi Galant Lambda and marketed as a "personal luxury" car. The model lasted from 1976 to 1983.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1979 Plymouth Horizon

This one's a beast. Not because it's fast or powerful, but because of the sheer craptitude of the "Omnirizon" and the fact it's still running against all odds and sensibilities.
The Plymouth Horizon and its twin, the Dodge Omni, were introduced in 1978 as two of Chrysler's entries into the bustling compact car market. Like most compacts of the time, they weren't the best-built cars. But they were pioneers in their market segment, as some of the first successful domestic front-wheel-drive small cars in the US and an important step in returning Chrysler to profitability in the '80s.