Glendale Street Sighting - 1939 Plymouth P8 DeLuxe 2-Door Touring Sedan

Super Bowl weekend, 2017. I took a trip down to Universal Studios Hollywood for my first visit to the theme park. I stayed in the Glendale area, a fairly quiet place known in large part for Forest Lawn Memorial Park cemetery. While driving around town I happened upon this mild custom 1939 Plymouth P8 two-door Touring Sedan.

San Jose Street Sighting - 1930 Chevrolet 3 Window Coupe

If you go to your average car show, you'd think that every car made circa 1930 was a Ford. But that's not true. Ford built a ridiculous number of Model As during this time, but Chevrolet was just as big a player in the market. It's true that Ford built a good half million more cars in 1930 than Chevy, a reversal from two years before when Chevy outsold Ford by half a million. The two rivals seesawed back and forth like this for years, even the now vaunted '32 Ford outsold by 50 percent by Chevrolet. Where the heck did all the Chevys from this era go?

Well, here's one.

Danville Street Sighting - 1937 Ford V8 Coupe

Few classic cars in my area are daily drivers, let alone to the point of being a sort of local landmark. This very blue customized 1937 Ford V8 coupe frequently parks outside a sports bar across from my local In 'N Out Burger. The 1932 Ford roadster I featured back in March sometimes hangs out with it. Usually it's parked off the street or moving when I see it, so catching it stationary on Hartz Avenue in downtown Danville on an average day after work is rare.

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.

Danville Street Sighting - 1932 Ford V8 Roadster

Were this '32 Ford roadster not a local car that I see on a semi-regular basis, I might consider it cheating to have photographed it half a block from the barricades of a car show. The town of Danville holds two 'Hot Summer Nights' car shows every summer, where they close off the main drag for the afternoon and evening and a few hundred cool cars roll in to be viewed by the general public. It's fun and free. Well, free for spectators, that is. Those who get there early can park their special rides just outside the boundaries and avoid the $15-20 or whatever the car entry fee is.
So technically this Deuce isn't a show car. Technically it's a spectator's car (and is parked in almost the same spot where I photographed the 1972 Ferrari 365 GTC). Note the car behind it. That's the 1963 Buick Wildcat convertible I photographed several blocks away on the 4th of July. This mint-colored hot rod is frequently driven and often parks at a sports bar in my town. I had photographed it once before in the parking lot at the bar, but this was the first chance I'd had to find the car parked on a public street. So here it is.

Danville Street Sighting - 1959 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II

All my life I considered it sacrilegious to cut up a fine luxury car like a Rolls-Royce or Bentley, particularly a classic one. It was one of the things you just didn't do. So of course, someone did.

San Jose Street Sighting - 1937 Ford Fordor Touring Sedan

You see them at every swap meet and cars for sale corral: The project car. Frequently it's something covered in dirt and leaves that someone lugged out of a barn after thirty years. Sometimes it's a wrecked vehicle that needs a rebuild. And sometimes it's a car that runs but is ugly and someone either ran out of time and money or simply realized they were in completely over their head. I suspect this car is the latter.