Danville Street Sighting - 1974 Datsun 260Z Custom

If there's one thing about me that drives my friends crazy, it's my tendency to be a purist. I generally prefer a vehicle to be kept visually stock or minimally and tastefully modified. With custom cars, beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. Rarely have I been more conflicted about a feature car than this 1974 Datsun 260Z.

San Jose Street Sighting - 1930 Chevrolet 3 Window Coupe

If you go to your average car show, you'd think that every car made circa 1930 was a Ford. But that's not true. Ford built a ridiculous number of Model As during this time, but Chevrolet was just as big a player in the market. It's true that Ford built a good half million more cars in 1930 than Chevy, a reversal from two years before when Chevy outsold Ford by half a million. The two rivals seesawed back and forth like this for years, even the now vaunted '32 Ford outsold by 50 percent by Chevrolet. Where the heck did all the Chevys from this era go?

Well, here's one.

Danville Street Sighting - 1946 Ford Super DeLuxe Custom

Every so often I pass by a shop in Danville and there's something interesting parked off on the side street. This usually happens while I'm on the clock at work in my van, so I can't stop. They aren't always there when I come back, and I usually don't get to meet the owner. This time I got lucky.

Livermore Street Sighting - 1955 Oldsmobile 88 Holiday

One of the defining characteristics of 1950s car styling is ostentation. Two- and three-tone paint jobs, tail fins, whitewall tires and lots of chrome trim everywhere are what most people associate with the era. But occasionally one comes across a car that does an awful lot with very little. I have come to really like the simpler designs of cheaper models that make do with less ornamentation. Some mildly customized cars like this 1955 Oldsmobile 88 can also pull it off.

Danville Street Sighting - 1972 Chevrolet C-20 Custom Camper

I've been a big fan of the 1967-'72 GM pickups since I convinced my dad to purchase a '71 GMC stepside when I was a kid. Most of them around here are either restored customs or tired work trucks now, so a clean stock truck is a great find. This one is a 1972 Chevy C-20 3/4 ton Custom Camper fleetside longbed, and I really like it.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1958 Ford Custom 300 Business Sedan

I'm a fan of the Arcane Auto Society car club of Northern California. My second-cousin is a member and I've managed to infiltrate a couple of their annual meets in San Francisco. It usually yields some unique street finds outside of the Cowden Automotive garage, which is too small to hold all of the multitude of oddball tin owned by club members. Is it cheating to shoot there? Maybe. But technically it's not really a car show in the traditional sense (officially it's a business meeting) and cars like this are parked in public street spaces. It's also my blog with my rules and really, what do my readers care if I bend my own arbitrary rules? This is a 1958 Ford Custom 300 Business Sedan.

San Ramon Street Sighting - 1929 Packard Model 640 Custom Eight Roadster

I've posted a couple of times previously about a collector in my area with a nice assortment of pre-war classics. His '40 Buick and '32 Cadillac have been featured here, and there are numerous others that end up in his garage from time to time. It should be noted that as of this writing I have never once asked him to pull a car out of the garage for me to shoot as a "street sighting". Sometimes I just get lucky! Today we're looking at what I believe to be a 1929 Packard Model 640 Custom Eight roadster.

Millbrae Street Sighting - 1982 Cadillac Coupe DeVille Mirage Pickup

Last year I commemorated Halloween with two vintage Cadillac hearses. I hoped to feature another hearse this year but I haven't seen one on the street since a midnight screening of Tommy Wiseau's "The Room" in Oakland. Photographing a black car on a dimly lit street at night while waiting in line for a movie doesn't work so well. So the closest thing I had in the archives was this, a 1982 Cadillac Coupe DeVille converted into a pickup truck. How is that related to a hearse? Well, some people I showed these pictures to believed it was a funeral flower car. I'm not so sure.

Danville Street Sighting - 1975 Datsun 280Z

On an ordinary day, I don't expect to see a lot of exciting cars around Danville, at least not ones that appear to be daily drivers. This customized Datsun pops up here and there on occasion, and I happened to catch it sitting still one day. It's a near twin of the white one I found on the side of the Pacific Coast Highway in Southern California two years ago.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1954 Ford Customline Tudor Sedan

Low-budget custom cars are inherently interesting, especially a fully customized cruiser. A proper "kustom" is expensive and labor-intensive, usually left to professional builders with shops full of specialized tools and equipment. It takes lots of planning and design work before the fabrication even begins. It can be done at home in the garage, and even on the cheap if the builder has the know-how and the will to do the work himself.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1995 GMC G2500 Vandura

"I love it when a plan comes together."

Those were the trademark words uttered by Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith, leader of the ragtag group of ex-soldiers in the NBC TV show The A-Team. The cast of characters acted as benevolent mercenaries, helping people who needed the special kind of assistance a bunch of trained military men could provide. And they did it all in style, traveling the country in a very distinctive customized GMC van.

Pleasanton Street Sighting - 1968 Chevrolet Van

I must say this is a new one on me.

General Motors turned out a fair number of Chevrolet and GMC vans in the 1960s to compete with Ford's Econoline and Dodge's A100. They followed the same formula: forward-control design with the engine located under or between the front passengers, rear-wheel-drive usually, and two wheelbase lengths. A cargo or passenger variant was always available. But I don't think the factory ever turned out anything like this.

San Jose Street Sighting - 1992 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser

I never really knew what to make of the Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser when I was younger. Well, the older ones made sense to me, the big boxy ones built between 1977 and 1990. To me, they had always been, and they were kind of cool.

San Ramon Street Sighting - 1986 AMC Eagle 4WD Wagon

This is Independent's Week, a recurring annual series in honor of America's Independence Day. This time around, we're looking at American Motors station wagons. This one is a 1986 AMC Eagle.

Berkeley Street Sighting - 1962 Rambler Classic Cross Country Custom Wagon

Continuing this "Independent's Week" in honor of America's Independence Day, and celebrating the American summer vacation road trip, we're looking at American Motors station wagons. Second in the series is this 1962 Rambler Classic Cross Country.

Berkeley Street Sighting - 1961 Rambler Classic Cross Country Custom Wagon

We're coming up on the Fourth of July again, Independence Day. And as is my custom, I'm featuring an assortment of cars from American manufacturers not affiliated with Detroit's Big Three. Welcome to Independents' Week.

It's summer in America, and summer is the best time for the American road trip. And traditionally, the American road trip takes place in a station wagon. And what's more American than an American Motors station wagon?

Castro Valley Street Sighting - 1967 Buick LeSabre Custom 400 Sport Coupe

In fall 2006 when I began going to college in San Francisco, I commuted on BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), basically a regional subway/light rail. I always caught the train out of the Castro Valley station, and when there was no space left in the BART parking lot I'd park down the street. It was early on that I'd often see a huge old green Buick LeSabre parked on the same street. It came and went and after a while it disappeared. I never saw what became of it until two years after graduation, when I was exploring a different part of Castro Valley and there it was. This was one of the first cars I photographed in depth with my then-new Canon 60D, as my poor trusty Kodak Z980 had just died four days previously (the power switch broke while attempting to photograph this 1974 Chevy Camaro). So I apologize that the photo quality is a bit poor; I hadn't figured out all the camera settings yet.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1970 Toyota Corona Mark II 1900 Wagon 4x4

A lot of the time, when you run across a custom car that's something completely unique, someone else has already posted something about it online. That makes research a lot easier. But sometimes it's a Frankenstein car and in some cases, the history isn't publicly known. All I know is I've seen this 1970 Toyota Corona Mark II wagon at least three times around the Bay Area since 2010 and I still know very little about it.

Castro Valley Street Sighting - 1956 Ford Customline Tudor Sedan

Oakland Street Sighting - 1963 Mercury Monterey Custom Breezeway

I have a bit of a soft spot for the 1963 Mercury Monterey. An acquaintance of mine owns one, a two-door with the Breezeway rear window that was a daily driver and occasional autocross car until it met a concrete barrier at an event. As of this writing, it awaits restoration.