San Francisco Street Sighting - 1959 Dodge Custom Royal Lancer

It's that time again, time for another weekly series. This one comes to you courtesy of Fifties Guy in San Francisco. Frequent readers will know who that is, but for those of you just joining us, Fifties Guy is my nickname for a collector of 1950s and early '60s cars in SF who parks them on the streets around his home and drives them daily. Most are big, heavy, massively-finned and usually overstyled late-'50s Chrysler products. So here you have it, folks: Forward Look Week. The "Forward Look" was stylist Virgil Exner's baby, and was the design language for most Mopar cars from 1955 to 1961. Take a look at an early-50s Dodge or Plymouth. Pretty boring, right? Maybe some chrome gingerbread and a snazzy grille but not much else to liven up an otherwise stodgy car. Then Exner came along and made things interesting.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1958 Dodge Custom Royal Regal Lancer D-500

Oooh, night shoot! I actually like how a lot of these photos came out. The story is, I decided one afternoon to head over to Fifties Guy's place and snap more of his cars. Problem was, I was walking from downtown. It was late afternoon, and once I ran smack into the Presidio I realized I had to climb the steep hills of Cow Hollow to get to there. This with a hefty backpack, since I had class earlier in the day. So I finally reached the Inner Richmond as it was getting dark. Too late to shoot cars, right? Voila! Mini tripod.