San Francisco Street Sighting - 1957 Berkeley Sports

I've mentioned the Arcane Auto Society car club before when writing for this site. They're all about preservation and driving of weird old cars that nobody else appreciates. I went to one of their club meetings and this was parked down the block. Folks, this one is pretty arcane. It's a Berkeley Sports roadster ...and that's about all I know.

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Just wanted to say thank you to my readers for over 500,000 pageviews. It's been a long road these past seven years, and I'm glad you're here.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1955 Morris Minor Series II

Before the Austin Mini made its debut and took the world by storm, the Morris Minor was British Motor Corporation's iconic postwar people's car. The Minor went into production in 1948 as the product of several years of development by Sir Alec Issigonis. It featured modern unit-body construction, rack and pinion steering and front independent suspension. Issigonis wanted to create a small cheap car that handled well, that a normal person would want to own and drive. He was successful in that mission and the Minor was the first British car to sell a million copies.

Danville Street Sighting - 1966 Austin Cooper S

Most everyone knows what a classic Mini looks like. It's up there with the Volkswagen Beetle and Ford Model T in terms of recognition, because all three cars were important milestones in mass-market vehicle design. The Mini was sold worldwide under various names between 1959 and 2000 and cemented its place in history with over 5.3 million copies. Only about 10,000 were originally imported to the United States through 1967. This is probably one of them.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1934 MG PA Midget

It takes a hardcore British sports car enthusiast to own a pre-war MG. They're small, crude, slow, unsafe and probably leak fluids from every conceivable place. But I imagine that they are one of the purest forms of motoring in a world dominated by modern Suburbans and F-150s with power steering, power disc brakes, automatic transmissions, dual-zone climate control and other such luxuries. A car like this 1930s MG PA Midget has a four-speed manual transmission, non syncromesh. Cable-operated manual drum brakes. Manual steering. Your dual-zone air conditioning is to lower the fabric top and/or hinge down the windshield. And as for power windows... what windows?

Pleasanton Street Sighting - 1967 Triumph 1200 Sports

This feature was several years in coming. I first saw this 1967 Triumph 1200 Sports roadster in March 2008, parked on the street near the Alameda County Fairgrounds during a Goodguys Rod and Custom Association car show. Back then it was wearing a set of vintage silver turbine wheels. The next time I saw it, in 2010 in Livermore, the Triumph was sitting on English-made Cosmic Mk1 road wheels painted white. I photographed the car that day but it was in angled street parking and I couldn't get a good profile. That, and the owner showed up during my shoot and needed to leave. I finally got lucky in summer 2015 when I was returning to my car after another Goodguys show and the Triumph was sitting near a railroad crossing a few blocks from the fairgrounds.