San Francisco Street Sighting - 1959 Mercury Park Lane Cruiser

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: a partridge in a pear tree.

The holiday season is once again upon us and I've utterly and completely failed to keep this site updated, so here's a little treat for my readers.
On this first day of Christmas, my archives give to thee, a Park Lane down on the street.

It's been a long time since I featured one of Fifties Guy's cars here, long enough that I think he actually sold this one before I got around to writing something about it. But I have these photos, and it was one of my favorite subjects from his collection.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1967 Ford Falcon

This has to be one of the most visually interesting cars I photographed in 2015. The '67 Ford Falcon never set out to be exciting originally, just a basic economy car that lived in the shadow of the Mustang. Ford produced a car that checked the boxes for a car of the era: Four doors, two doors, station wagon; six or eight cylinders; automatic or manual, done. The body was conservatively styled and the chassis conservatively engineered. The colors it was offered in were generally conservative as well. Nothing about this car really stands out, but for the incredible patina it wears.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1964 Rambler Classic 660

This is the car I always forget about in the AMC model hierarchy. The Classic was a midrange car during the Rambler years that made up the bulk of Rambler sales between 1961 and 1966. The first Classics were cheaply refreshed 1950s cars and the line only received a complete redesign in 1963. All Classics were six-cylinder economy cars until the '63 model year when the V8 from the large Ambassador was offered as an option.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1965 Citroën DS 19

All right, I may have cheated some.
Last year a relative invited me to a meeting of his car club, the Arcane Auto Society, in San Francisco. This was what I found parked on the street outside the garage where the members met. It's a 1965 Citroën DS 19. It was not the only club member vehicle I photographed on the street that morning and I'll be happy to share the others with you at a later date. The club meeting functioned as an unofficial indoor car show and was a fascinating assemblage of everything from a right-hand-drive Reliant Regal three-wheeler with UK plates to a Peel Trident bubble car. Regrettably, those were off the street and within the boundaries of a car show and not eligible for blog features at the time, even though they were awesome. Even here, we have rules...

Los Angeles Street Sighting - 1979 Lincoln Continental Mark V

Okay, full disclosure. This car belongs to my friend, who purchased it in L.A. a few years ago for $600 to save it from being crushed. These photos were taken the first time I ever laid eyes on it. This is also perhaps the only street sighting to date which I've actually ridden in.

Danville Street Sighting - 1975 Pontiac Astre SJ

It's funny how people lampoon one car for being terrible to the point it becomes infamous, and completely forget that rebadges of the same car even exist. Such is the case with the Pontiac Astre. The Astre was a rebadge job on the Chevrolet Vega, now famous for its rust problems and unreliable 2.3 liter aluminum-block engines. The Astre was sold in Canada only from 1973 to '74, then it came to the US market in '75 as Pontiac's smallest and cheapest model.

Berkeley Street Sighting - 1961 Porsche 356B Sunroof Coupe

There haven't been a lot of vintage Porsches featured on California Streets. Why? Because old 911s are still pretty common, and the earlier 356s are now expensive collectibles that are almost always garaged when not in use. This one has the most awesome patina of any 356 I've seen since the crash-damaged 1954 356 Speedster displayed in time-capsule state in a plexiglass box at the Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum in Germany.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1965 Sunbeam Alpine 1725 Roadster

One of the more intriguing car companies for me is the Rootes Group from Britain, manufacturer of such vehicles as Talbot, Commer, Humber, Sunbeam, Hillman and Singer. The company actually began as a dealership network in 1913, and over the next few decades it grew to purchase a series of British automobile manufacturers. Rootes subscribed, more or less, to the General Motors school of thought: a brand for every purse and purpose, and clearly defined model ranges to fit each application and niche. Rootes was an early adopter of badge-engineering, another GM favorite, and was also an interesting early producer of compact luxury cars.

Rootes operated in various markets around the world with varying levels of success, in Europe, Australia, North America, South America and even the Middle East (the latter by local factories under license). In the late 1960s, Chrysler took an interest in Rootes, both as a captive import for the US market and to get itself a foothold in Europe where Chrysler's American-oriented cars were not marketable. Around this time Chrysler took over Rootes and French carmaker Simca, and made a fine mess of it over the next decade. What little was left when Chrysler was done with it was sold to Peugeot in 1978. In 2007 Rootes ended where it began 94 years earlier, as nothing more than a name on a UK car dealership.

This week we're taking a look at an assortment of Rootes Group cars. First of these is one of the best-known Rootes cars in America, the Sunbeam Alpine sports roadster.

Danville Street Sighting - 1971 Datsun 510

The toughest calls on what qualifies as a street sighting are usually those belonging to car show spectators. Even more difficult is when those cars are across the street, around the corner or down the block from the car show itself. Here is one such vehicle that really spoke to me, a 1971 Datsun 510 sedan which, at the time I photographed it, was an unrestored two-owner car with 63,000 miles.

Danville Street Sighting - 1948 Oldsmobile Dynamic 68

It's almost safe to say I've seen more custom cars with late-1940s Oldsmobile grilles than actual Oldsmobiles from that era. It's as if everyone scrapped them and forgot they existed. Fords, Chevys, that's all that seems to come out of the woodwork. The occasional Buick, Cadillac, Mercury or Chrysler product will pop up now and then, but Ford and Chevrolet seem to dominate the American classic car population and Oldsmobile is rarely represented. A postwar Olds, even a garden-variety four-door, is a red letter find for me.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1968 Dodge Coronet 440

Oh boy, if cars could talk. The 1968 Dodge Coronet sedan was not a particularly exciting vehicle, but I find this one fascinating.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1969 AMC Javelin SST

My friends know that in addition to being a big Ford fan, I love American Motors products. And one of my favorite AMCs ever is the 1969 Javelin. The Javelin was AMC's entry in the pony car market in the 1960s and '70s, with flavors ranging from six-banger economy coupe to tire-smoking muscle car. If that formula sounds familiar, it should. AMC was late to the party but the Javelin - particularly the short-wheelbase AMX - could party as hard as most of its competitors.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1966 Datsun 411

This was one of my most anticipated scores for the blog, at least within the city of Alameda. Everyone knows the Datsun Z-cars, and a fair number are familiar with the Fairlady roadsters, but the early mainstream passenger cars are much less often seen in the United States today. The Datsun Bluebird is a model best known to Americans as the 510, sold from 1968 to 1974. But before that, Datsun was a bit player in the compact market in the US, selling small pickup trucks and dowdy little economy cars. In late 1963 Datsun brought out the Pininfarina-styled 410, a car that made a Datsun sedan a little more interesting to look at in one's driveway. The 411 was added in 1965, which traded the 1.2 liter four-cylinder for a 1.3 liter unit producing 67 horsepower.