Oakland Street Sighting - 1962 Chrysler 300

I have a difficult relationship with early 1960s Chrysler products. I grew up loving the Forward Look cars penned by Virgil Exner. But after 1958, things started to get weird. For your consideration is our second 1962 Chrysler 300 hardtop.

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.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1979 Chrysler 300

September 11 is a bittersweet day for Americans. This is the day when we remember the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City on the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. We also remember Flight 93, which went down in rural Pennsylvania after a number of the passengers fought the hijackers aboard that plane to prevent it from hitting its target. One of those heroes on Flight 93, Thomas Burnett, lived in my town of San Ramon; there is a freeway overpass here dedicated in his memory. Some Americans also remember this day for the more recent 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. To many, September 11 is Patriot Day, when we remember how we all came together as a country thirteen years ago. Beyond that, this is a car blog, and I generally try not to get overly political here.
So today in honor of Patriot Day, we're looking at a 1979 Chrysler 300.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1966 Chrysler 300 Convertible

One of my very first street sighting posts on this blog, #6, was a 1966 Chrysler 300 two-door hardtop in San Francisco. Now we're approaching five hundred. Here's another '66 Chrysler 300 in San Francisco, but this time it's a drop-top.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1964 Chrysler 300K

Chrysler's 300 letter cars are some of their best-known historical models, a range of high-performance luxury muscle cars that proved themselves on the NASCAR circuit. The traditional logic for a performance car in the 1960s typically called for a relatively light vehicle with bucket seats, a large-displacement V8 and a four-speed manual transmission on the floor. The traditional logic for a Chrysler by this point was a huge, heavy car with a big lazy V8 and an automatic. The 300 was more of a powerful highway cruiser for executives looking for a sportier car than an Imperial. The 300 letter series was the ultimate 300 with more power and more sport touches. And for a select few who wanted to row their own gears, a four-speed with Hurst shifter was available. Chrysler sold 3,022 300Ks in 1964, but only 82 customers bought a 4-speed. This is one of 450 coupes known to survive, and one of just fourteen known 4-speeds left. I contacted Bob Merritt of Golden Lion Grrrages, a Chrysler 300 enthusiast who believes that this car is one of the fourteen in his records.

Berkeley Street Sighting - 1962 Chrysler 300

Sometimes when searching for cars I'm very lucky, and sometimes my timing is very poor. I happened upon this 1962 Chrysler 300 on a day when the owner was about to meet with a prospective buyer. As in, literally within minutes. He walked outside shortly after I began photographing the car and we chatted for a while. Then the buyer arrived and I decided it was time to let them discuss business.

The 1962 Chrysler 300 is a mixed bag of car design. The '61 cars had received slanted headlamps and a trapezoidal grille, which continued into 1962. The new cars lost their tailfins for a more modern look. It also marked a partial decline of the 300 letter series begun in 1955 with the NASCAR-winning C-300. The 300 was now available in non-letter form as a mass-market coupe, convertible or even a four-door hardtop with an options list that included most of the formerly exclusive 300 letter-car content. This heavily eroded sales of the 300H. Even the 300H's 413 cubic inch "Wedge" V8 was optional on the regular 300 in place of its standard 383 engine.

I seem to recall that this was a Wedge car. It had had an interesting life, including but not limited to a replacement right front fender to fix crash damage (the paint was a different color on the inside when the owner opened the hood to show me the engine). Much of the trim still had blue painter's tape covering it as evidence of a quickie spray job, and the owner told me that almost all of his cars had recently been attacked by some hooligan breaking windshields. (Note the Mercedes W123 behind it.) The Chrysler had been fortunate to escape further damage. The car also employed an anti-theft device - a purposely deflated right front tire when not in use.

The interior was in surprisingly good shape aside from worn and torn leather seats. I think this car has the push-button automatic transmission. The body was still a bit beat-up and rusty, but I'm hopeful that whoever ultimately purchased the car saved it. I hate seeing complete and running vehicles parted out.

Note to readers: This car was photographed in July 2013. Please don't ask if it's still for sale; I don't know but the answer is probably not.

Malibu Street Sighting - 1956 Seagrave 70th Anniversary Series 1000-300 Fire Truck

It's not every day you see a car or truck with a name that's as long as the vehicle. But Seagrave Fire Apparatus didn't mess around when they came up with the name for this fire truck. Seagrave has been around for a long time, since 1881. In 1951 they celebrated their 70th year in the business with the 70th Anniversary Series. Apparently they were like Disneyland and never let a big anniversary go to waste, so the series continued in production for some 19 years. Seagrave prided itself on being the 'greatest name in fire apparatus' - and it says so on the side. As far as I can tell, power for a truck like this came from a gasoline V12 engine producing 300 horses, with a 4-speed manual transmission.

Santa Cruz Street Sighting - 1963 Chrysler 300

In the summer of 2010 I was returning from Santa Cruz's silly tourist trap, the Mystery Spot, and happened upon a white 1966 Dodge Monaco 440 station wagon parked on the street. It would have been an awesome subject for a street sighting feature, but I passed. One photo from the driver's seat of my car and away I went, promising myself that I would go back someday and shoot it properly.
Two years passed. I went back. The car was gone. In its place was this, a 1963 Chrysler 300 coupe. The owner walked outside while I was photographing it and I asked what happened to the Monaco. He told me he had sold it, but one day while Googling for 1966 Monaco wagons he had found a picture of his wagon, posted on a car blog called California Streets. Small world, indeed!

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1966 Chrysler 300

Ah yes... nothing quite like an Earl Scheib paint job to spruce up a 40 year old land yacht. Well, if you don't plan on winning the Concours d'Elegance, anyway. This 1966 Chrysler 300 looks pretty darn good from across the street, and wears its pool-table green pretty well.