Castro Valley Street Sighting - 1967 Buick LeSabre Custom 400 Sport Coupe

In fall 2006 when I began going to college in San Francisco, I commuted on BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), basically a regional subway/light rail. I always caught the train out of the Castro Valley station, and when there was no space left in the BART parking lot I'd park down the street. It was early on that I'd often see a huge old green Buick LeSabre parked on the same street. It came and went and after a while it disappeared. I never saw what became of it until two years after graduation, when I was exploring a different part of Castro Valley and there it was. This was one of the first cars I photographed in depth with my then-new Canon 60D, as my poor trusty Kodak Z980 had just died four days previously (the power switch broke while attempting to photograph this 1974 Chevy Camaro). So I apologize that the photo quality is a bit poor; I hadn't figured out all the camera settings yet.

Castro Valley Street Sighting - 1960 Sunbeam Alpine Series I Roadster

Sunbeam Alpines and V8 Tigers are among my favorite vintage British roadsters, so it's a treat whenever I come across one. Though, as is common with older European cars, I'm terrible at narrowing down the model year or series number without visual clues. Best I can tell, we're looking at a Series I or Series II Alpine produced between 1959 and 1962. I'd like to think it's a '62 because the Series II cars had more power and were the most popular series. A 1963 car would have had vent windows on the doors and 1964 did away with the tail fins (making the rear somewhat resemble a Triumph TR4). The Alpine was a Rootes Group parts-bin special of Hillman and Sunbeam pieces, with a '50s-fashionable body and such novelties as roll-up windows and a heater that actually worked. It was good enough that one saw duty as James Bond's car in 1962's Dr. No. Granted, it only had to outrun a hearse. Nonetheless, modified Alpines were used successfully in racing.

Castro Valley Street Sighting - 1956 Ford Customline Tudor Sedan

Castro Valley Street Sighting - 1934 Chevrolet 3-Window Coupe

Hot rods are a mixed bag for me. They're built to the taste of the owner, which is fine, but they can go two very different routes to get there. One is to start with an original vehicle, ranging from a rusty junkyard shell to a nice clean car. The other is to build a brand-new replica from fiberglass or steel in the style of the car you want. The increasing availability of fiberglass bodies for custom cars over the past few decades calls into question the provenance of many of the rods and customs one sees at shows nowadays. Several of the most common replicas include '32 Fords, '33-34 Fords, Shelby Cobras, 1941 Willys Americars and, to a lesser extent, the Beetle/Chevette/Pinto-based 1929 Mercedes SSK ("Gazelle"), Beetle-based Porsche 356 Speedster, and any number of Italian exotics mimicked poorly on the long-suffering Pontiac Fiero chassis. One of the cars I didn't previously know is available as a fiberglass replica, though, is the 1934-1935 Chevrolet 3-window coupe.

Best of the Rest: Little Luggers

1969-72 Datsun 521 camper, San Francisco

1975-78 Toyota Truck, San Francisco

1978 Chevrolet LUV pickup, San Francisco

1978 Ford Courier pickup, Castro Valley

1982-84 Mazda B2000 Sundowner pickup, San Francisco

Castro Valley Street Sighting - 1961 Volkswagen Type 2 Bus pickup

Very rarely in the United States will you find a Volkswagen Type 2 pickup. Thanks to the so-called "chicken tax" of 1963, which put heavy tariffs on light trucks imported to the US (because France and West Germany put a 25% tax on US chicken imports to their countries), vehicles such as the VW Bus/Transporter pickup and cargo van variants were rarely worth the trouble of importing since the cost was so high. The only alternative was to pass the cost on to the consumer, and people didn't want to pay 25% more for the same vehicle, so they simply bought an American-made truck or van instead. VW Kombi Buses were classified as passenger cars and marketed as station wagons, so they weren't subject to the chicken tax. The chicken tax is still in effect for any foreign-made light truck imported as a fully assembled vehicle.

Castro Valley Street Sighting - 1953 Dodge Coronet

"That thing got a Hemi?"

Those are some of the most famous words in the vocabulary of any Chrysler fan. The Hemi engine remains something of a mythical beast, a highly desirable option in any model in which it was offered. It can mean the difference between an affordable muscle car and a multi-hundred-thousand-dollar Barrett-Jackson auction special.

Castro Valley Street Sighting - 1967 Mercury Cougar XR7

In my last post I touched on my fondness for the Ford Mustang. I also said that I'd minimize the number of Mustangs featured here.

This is not a Mustang. Well, not quite.

It's a 1967 Mercury Cougar XR-7, a competitor for the Mustang which was based on the same platform and occupied a slightly higher market position. Fundamentally, it's still a Mustang, albeit one with nicer trim and a more upscale, European-looking body that further separates it from its bread-and-butter Falcon roots. (Cool fact: Cougar was one of the names Ford executives considered when naming the Mustang).

Castro Valley Street Sighting - 1980 Volkswagen Dasher

If any company doing business in the US at the dawn of the 1980s had small cars down to a science, it had to be Volkswagen. VW helped put the world on wheels with its Type 1 (Beetle), Type 2 (Microbus), Type 3 (Fastback, Notchback and Squareback). But even the People's Car had to have a top model, and in 1974 the Passat (German for "Trade Wind") was born. It was available in a variety of body styles including a two or four-door sedan, a three or five-door hatchback, and a station wagon. In North America the first generation of Passats were marketed as the Dasher between 1974 and 1981. Following the model's refresh for 1982, the name was changed to Quantum, and then, in 1986, to Passat. It remains Volkswagen's large-midsize sedan in the American market.