San Francisco Street Sighting - 1963 Chrysler New Yorker

It's hard to believe it took me the better part of a decade to get this car onto the blog. I first sighted this 1963 Chrysler New Yorker in San Francisco while on a road trip around California with friends in 2007. At that time it was parked in the Inner Richmond neighborhood and sitting on American Racing directional sawblade wheels. I only got a couple of snapshots of it that day, and spent my entire college years exploring the city with that Chrysler on my list of vehicles to find and shoot in depth. It was only after a day trip in which I covered the entire road grid of the Sunset District that the car turned up again. The first time I located the New Yorker it was very late in the day and my shoot came out poorly, half of the car in the shadow of the houses across the street. I came back at a later date and did much better.

Danville Street Sighting - 1952 Chrysler New Yorker

That thing got a Hemi? Yep.

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.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1957 Chrysler New Yorker

One of my favorite cars on the Island that Rust Forgot, also known as the city of Alameda, California, is this excellent 1957 Chrysler New Yorker four-door hardtop. Chrysler Corporation was really at the top of its game when Virgil Exner unveiled his Forward Look lineup of dramatic yet graceful new cars for '57. The fanciest four-door Chrysler that year (apart from the Imperial, which was its own luxury brand) was the New Yorker. We've already looked at a base-model '57 Chrysler Windsor pillared sedan, now see how the other half lived.