Danville Street Sighting - 1977 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray

Many of you are no doubt stuck at home during the now infamous COVID-19 lockdown. I've been out of the loop on blogging for the past months and not producing much content, even though I continue to photograph cars and have a fair number of them archived. So, for your viewing pleasure, let's look at a 1977 Chevy Corvette Stingray. I enjoyed photographing this one during the sunny summer months last year.

Oakland Street Sighting - 1977 Lincoln Continental Mark V

Today marks the seventh day of the fabled countdown to Christmas.

On the seventh day of Christmas my archive gave to thee:
Seventy-seven Lincoln,
Suede Studebaker,
Fine Nomad bling,
Ford Thunderbird,
Beige French shed,
Tuned Chevy LUV,
and a Park Lane down on the street.

I have such an irrational love for Malaise-era big cars. By today's standards, many see them as horrible slow oversized barges that suck down gas and pollute like no tomorrow, fit only for demolition derbies. What are you, some kind of communist? How can you hate a personal luxury coupe with a big V8, plush couch seats, a big proud grille and err... hidden headlights, opera windows, a fake spare tire hump and fake fender vents? So what if it has less than 160 horsepower and has to be smogged in perpetuity? It has presence!

Danville Street Sighting - 1977 Volkswagen Beetle Convertible Champagne Edition

For years I resisted photographing Beetles. Volkswagen cranked out 21 million of the things and a lot of them are still puttering around in various conditions. Our first featured Bug was a customized one made to look like a 1937 Ford. Since then I've wanted to find a Karmann convertible Beetle, since those are less common than their regular sedan siblings (just 331,847 built). I got lucky with this one, which turns out to be a 1977 Champagne special edition.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1977 Pontiac Grand Prix SJ

My previous post about the 1979 Chrysler 300 discussed the Malaise era's idea of a personal luxury car. Fake wood, hood ornament, baroque detailing, padded vinyl roof, you name it. Exotic, expensive-sounding European name? You got it. Take a look at the 1977 Pontiac Grand Prix SJ and you get all those things. And much like the 300 was a sport version of the Cordoba, the SJ was the sport version of the Grand Prix.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1977 Buick Regal

A lot of cars have dealer license plate frames. A lot of cars have dealer plaques or name stickers on the trunk lid or rear panel. But not many owners keep the original window sticker from when the car was new. Here's one who did. It's a 1977 Buick Regal originally purchased at Don Stein Buick in Overland Park, Kansas.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1977 Citroën 2CV6

San Francisco is known for many things, good or bad, and one of those things is a high population of old French cars. To date, I've featured seven classic Citroëns, all of them spotted in the city of San Francisco. This '77 2CV is number 8. And there are more on the way in the future.

San Ramon Street Sighting - 1977 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow II

The Silver Shadow is still on my short list of favorite Rolls-Royce models. Really, it is a short list. Rolls hasn't made many cars that personally interest me in their illustrious 100-plus year history. Theirs is a reputation for quality, luxury, smoothness and silence. They build cars to a standard, not a price, and as a result the price is quite high - at least when new from the factory. Old Rollers are quite a bit cheaper.

Pleasanton Street Sighting - 1977 Mercury Monarch Coupe

I've always kind of thought that blatant rebadge jobs were a bit silly, when a vehicle is sold under two different names in the same market with only minor differences between them. It works great if you're the manufacturer and your two models have simple bolt-on pieces to differentiate them; it's a cheap way to create a luxury variant. That's the formula Ford used for the Ford Granada and Mercury Monarch. The Lincoln Versailles was the ultimate form of the Granada, and had some of its own unique sheet metal. But the Monarch was a Granada with a slightly different front clip, slightly different taillights and a Mercury hood ornament and badging. Inside, the Monarch came with special parts like a center console taken from the Versailles, and ... um... Mercury badges. There was a fancier Grand Monarch Ghia from 1975-76, but I assume it didn't sell well enough to continue production beyond that. Engines and transmissions were the same as the Granada, two straight sixes and two V8s.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1977 Pontiac Sunbird Sport Coupe

If you think '1977 Pontiac', there's probably a 90% chance you think of the black Trans-Am Burt Reynolds drove in Smokey and the Bandit. Admit it, that's what you thought.

Pretty much everything else Pontiac made back then was less interesting. At the bottom of the food chain was this, the Sunbird. It was built on the GM H-platform shared with the Chevy Monza, Buick Skyhawk and Oldsmobile Starfire, all of which were based on the old Chevy Vega and Pontiac Astre. The Sunbird Sport Coupe evolved from the Monza Towne Coupe and in 1977 could be had with a 2.5 liter Iron Duke four only - except in California and high-altitude areas, which got the old Vega 2.3. A fastback-styled hatchback was new for 1977. Two more powerful V6 and V8 engines would be added for 1978. The old Astre wagon continued as a Sunbird Safari for a couple more years. These little cars were available with some interesting appearance and mild performance packages, including Trams-Am-inspired sport touches like 'snowflake' cast aluminum wheels, sport steering wheel and body striping. A Sunbird Formula was a pretty cool little package for what it was.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1977 Chevrolet Monza 2+2

I never would have guessed that people collect obscure and unloved GM compacts, let alone the H-body Chevy Monza. Someone in Alameda apparently does just that. This one's a 1977 Monza 2+2 hatchback.

Santa Cruz Street Sighting - 1977 Dodge Aspen Custom coupe

The Dodge Aspen and Plymouth Volare are two nearly identical cars with a certain reputation as ... well, absolute crap. They were intended to replace the popular and dependable Dodge Dart and Plymouth Valiant, and by all accounts they should have been perfect. They had the same trusty slant-six and V8 engines, and an options list a mile long with variants from a 4-door sedan to a coupe to a wagon, and various luxury or performance packages. They were designed for aerodynamic efficiency, better fuel economy and more luxury. For a short while the formula worked. They sold over half a million Volares and Aspens -- of which more than 66,000 were Aspen coupes -- in 1977 alone. So what went wrong? Where did they all go?

San Ramon Street Sighting - 1977 BMW 630CSi

One of my favorite two-door luxury coupes is the BMW E24 6 Series. Curiously I always hated the E23 7 Series on which it was based, but felt that the styling lent itself very handsomely to a coupe.

San Jose Street Sighting - 1977 AMC Hornet AMX

I don't know many people who will admit it, but I'm one of those people who watches the Bond flick The Man With the Golden Gun just because of the silly car chase through Bangkok involving two obscure American Motors cars, a man with three nipples, a midget and a bumbling Louisiana sheriff. What can possibly go wrong? Of course one of said obscure AMC cars can fly. Well, the other one did, too, at least briefly.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1977 Ford Granada coupe

Last year my good friend Colin Stacy and I spent a day driving around San Francisco. I showed him the sights, and we both kept a look out for old and interesting parked cars to photograph. As some of my readers know, Colin operates The Automotive Way, his own blog about cars he finds mostly in his hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Owing to the general scarcity of rust-free old cars in Minnesota, he also features cars found in other places such as Kansas and Idaho, whereas I limit my focus to cars from my home state of California.
Since San Francisco is pretty much my back yard, you can figure I wanted to feature the cars we photographed, but Colin beat me to it. So enjoy our different takes on these vehicles. First up is a 1977 Ford Granada coupe.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1977 Ford Granada

There once was a time when Ford could get away with comparing their cars to a Mercedes-Benz based on the kind of looks and interior noise level you could get for a budget price. In fact, that's exactly how Ford advertised the Granada in the United States. You got a car that, if you squinted just right or were sufficiently intoxicated, you might be able to compare to a contemporary Mercedes. It had an upright rectangular grille with a hood ornament, and you could get it with various luxury features found on a Mercedes. It was advertised as having a ride and level of quietness on par with a Mercedes as well. Of course, those tests were conducted using the six-cylinder model instead of the available (and probably louder) V8. And if the Ford wasn't enough to convince buyers that it was a Benz-fighter, the Granada was also offered in fancier Mercury Monarch and Lincoln Versailles variants.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1977 Mercury Grand Marquis

Continuing my "Spirit of ... '77" theme this week, I present to you this lovely 1977 Mercury Grand Marquis sedan. I found it somewhat by accident, the way I find many of the cars I feature, while walking in San Francisco. I frequently set off to find a particular vehicle I've previously researched and end up finding something completely different. In this case I ventured up Telegraph Hill and stumbled upon this exquisite Mercury.

San Jose Street Sighting - 1977 Chevrolet Monte Carlo Landau

When choosing the 1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass for my last feature, I noticed that my archives contain quite a few 1977-model cars. So, I have a new theme for this week: Spirit of ... '77.
Now, the late 1970s are referred to as the Malaise period for a reason. Big, bulky, slow cars with emissions-choked engines and the death of the muscle car. Sales of big personal luxury coupes were up, though, and this was one of the big players in that market segment. It's a 1977 Chevy Monte Carlo Landau.

Pleasanton Street Sighting - 1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass S

One thing I have to respect is an old family car that's been kept in cherry condition, or shown the love of a proper restoration. And few have gotten a better response from me than this, a very clean
1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass S sedan.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1977 Buick Century wagon

Here's one I used to see all the time for years before I started this humble blog. This 1977 Buick Century wagon would show up parked somewhere in downtown San Francisco nearly every day I went to classes in The City. And every time, it was always packed full of junk. I never found out where it lived, but for all I know, it could have lived right there judging by the stuff in it. Since it appeared week after week, I never really thought to photograph it except a couple of times when I saw it at night. I haven't seen that car in a while. It may have gone elsewhere, it may even be dead. I can remain hopeful that it lives on, somewhere.