My recent trip to San Francisco was like the 1849 gold rush for me; I struck gold with the many CC’s I spotted. I was amazed to find so many old cars in such good condition, domestic and foreign, never mind the ultimate Trackside Classic. I even spotted several cars I’ve never seen before. Many of them were taken from a moving tour bus, which can explain the less than stellar angles, lighting and general quality. Regardless, I just had to share my finds with you all, and hope you enjoy!
First up is one for Tom. A 1975-80 Volvo 242 (I’m not the Volvo expert). Looking good in inoffensive off-white, aside from that dent and missing hubcaps, it looks as strong as the white Intrigue behind it.
On to a pristine Mercedes-Benz 190E.
I always loved the two-tone combinations Mercedes made available during this era.
A vehicle of similar vintage, though this one looks like it’s been on a few more trips to Lake Tahoe than the Mercedes’ shopping sprees to Saks Fifth Avenue in Union Square. Regardless, it was nice to see a GMC Jimmy of any condition, especially the 1st generation S-15.
And it has leather too! I guess a few leather buckets made their way off the Bravada’s assembly line and into some average-Joe GMCs.
For the minivan lovers, or Chrysler minivan lovers at least, a pair of 1st and 2nd generation Voyagers.
And then something that threw me off:
I was walking up to snap a pic of this LeBaron-K sedan, but something seemed a bit off. It wasn’t until I saw the roofline that I realized this wasn’t a basic K, but the extended-length E. But New Yorkers with their enormous landau roof swallowed the rearmost windows. And the E-Class was dropped before the the more aerodynamic nose restyle. What the E?
Alas! It’s a Plymouth Caravelle! With a LeBaron front clip! Not only was I happy to solve this mystery, but also happy to see a Caravelle for the first time I can ever remember.
Back to something unmodified from factory-build, a 2nd-gen Acura Integra. Which is extremely surprising considering that most of these have been horrendously modified to the extreme with oversized bumpers, rims, and spoilers, sickening paint jobs, deep-tint windows, and fake xenon headlights.
I actually saw quite a few Integras in SF, including this bright-red 1st-gen RS.
I ran into a few of the Integra’s larger Legend siblings, as well.
Like this white 1st-generation coupe.
And this gold 2nd-generation sedan. I never really noticed the evolutionary styling changes until comparing these two rear view photos.
Some more late 80’s/early 90’s foreign luxury cars:
A Saab 9000.
Lexus ES250.
And the quintessential Yuppie E30 3-Series.
I also ran into a few real oldies, like this ’67 Chrysler Imperial Crown 4-door.
And this LeSabre convertible.
Now I could go on much more with other cars I photographed, as well as more details and pictures on featured cars above. There may even be a full CC coming up on one of the cars above (Hint, Hint). Can you guess which one?
But before I end, I have to share one last car that literally stopped me in my tracks when I saw it on my morning run. Damn those hills were tough!
Yes. A Merkur Scorpio! I have never, ever seen one of these in person. I kill myself for not being able to get back to it on foot with my camera in hand. These shots from the moving van I was in are all I have as proof.
The Gold Rush may have ended over 150 years ago, but I struck gold of a different kind in San Francisco.
That 67 Imperial is sweet.
Here’s the rearview
+ 1,000
LOL! (This would be my pick of this litter…even above the LeSabre)
My Mom once owned a 190E and it was a pain to maintain. It got traded in for a early 90s Skylark with a V6 and the “interesting” styling. The Buick was alot more dependable than the Merc ever dreamed of being.
Upcoming CC? Let’s hope for the Imp or the LeSabre…some Buick love in contrast to recent Olds fawning.
That red Integra is the rare the 5-door body style, exclusive to the 1st generation.
Here’s a better side view
My first trip to San Francisco with some buddies in 1970 was the very first time I had ever seen a Citroen 2CV, and several other oddballs.
Wifey and I love going to the Bay Area as well as California as a whole on vacations!
When I was a kid, there was Zackman, a Citroen dealer off of Van Ness; I think the west side of California past Van Ness. You could in San Francisco at one time, buy just about every kind of new car there was. There were dealerships all over the city and if they didn’t have it, they could get it.
Yeah, I remember the old Ellis Brooks Chevrolet jingle, “Come to Ellis Brooks today, for your Chevrolet, at the corner of Bush and Van Ness…” They got out of the new car biz at the end of 2008. Other dealers have also decamped the city. Probably due to very high land costs.
There still are a few dealers left in SF, though.
I don’t know where this stuff comes from that you can’t have a 190E or other old car as a daily driver unless you do your own work or pay exorbitant prices to your mechanic. I guarantee you those cars Brendan posted aren’t all getting wrenched on at home.
You see the same stuff in LA all the time, usually parked in front of an apartment building. Volvos bricks and old Mercedes are ubiquitous. Scorpios and Saab 9000s not so much. Talk about debunking the myth.
The trouble is finding a good car like I’ve been saying.
Love the gen 2 Integras and the Imperial. Thanks Brendan!
I think the surprise is that you can have an old car in Cali especially as a daily driver. Word in the other 49 states is that Cali goes out of its way to force older cars( or any car that is not a Prius) off the road. In California, anybody can call the DMV about somebody else’s old car and that owner will get letter offering them $1500 to take it off the road. Such BS
Don’t believe everything you hear. Californians love their cars. We had a Governor once, Gray Davis, who tried raising registration fees. We bounced him out of office for that and, surprise, he was a Democrat. Arnold replaced him.
We have more old cars on the road because more were sold here new and the weather has been kind to them. Also, because of its size, there is plenty of demand for honest, capable mechanics and you can find them.
I wonder who started CARB?
From what I understand, cars over 35 are hands off in Cali and only two year renewals. There is a fellow here with a 69 Karmann Ghia who moved from Cali to NC years ago and still keeps that car on old CA plates.
I know when I bought my 81 Imperial from California years ago it came with a stack of paperwork a few inches thick from compliance. The upside was the owner was forced to fix problems.
NC has inspections, I have mixed feelings about it as I am usually naturally against things that crimp ownership enjoyment, but around here (of course cars don’t rust) truly bad cars that need attention and or a menace to the roads are flagged. Cars with major problems need to be fixed or parked (or gotten rid of).
California only has a smog check. There is NO other kind of inspection which leads to some truly shocking pieces of crap rolling around. If Cali was serious about getting rid of older cars they would institute a mandatory inspection.
There is a smog test every two years for cars newer than ’76 but no safety inspections like they have in other states.
If you see an older California plate on a classic car in your state my guess is that the plate is either blue or black. Those are (usually) a sign that the car was bought new in Calif. You see “black plates” in the BaT posts all the time, it’s a bragging right of sorts.
If the plates are the white ones on that guy’s car I have no idea why unless of course he’s homesick 😉
My Imperial came with blue and yellow plates, appropriate for a car sold new in 1981 with and inch of renewal stickers. Of course the car is registered in NC now but I still keep the plate along with paperwork and other ephemeral for conversation.
NC does inspections for 35 and newer. They do an MIL computer check on OBDII cars. My 93 Century was flagged for a loose inner tie rod a few years ago which I promptly fixed.
The Karmann I mentioned had blue/yellow plates from 1972. Apparently sometime between 69 and 72 it got new plates. He even has the original Bob Smith VW tags from Hollywood.
In NC, plates stay with you, you can reuse a vanity plate on another car. NC has an enormous number of vanity plates in addition to the special order letter/number combinations.
From what I have read (and I think Laurence Jones said this) mass transit is so good around the Bay Area that a car is more hobby than necessity. Here in Indianapolis, your car is your only practical option. If it goes down on you, there is no Plan B other than getting it fixed. So, a car gets used a lot harder in a place like Indiana where it will be mandatory everyday transportation. 15,000 miles a year puts a lot more demands on an old car than 4,000 miles a year.
Parking is horrendously expensive in SF and many of the older buildings don’t have any. If you live in the city and don’t really need a car you don’t have one.
The “bay area” is vast and includes the east bay, north bay and San Jose. Public transportation from the outlying areas to the city center is not so good.
Besides those can’t all be hobby cars Brendan saw parked at the curbs.
Would never recommend an old car for someone who drives 15,000/miles a year!
Public transportation around the Bay Area may be good relative to some other cities in the US, however compared to other major cities around the world it is a complete joke. If you live near a transit stop and work near one it may work for you, otherwise forget it.
Exactly. People see the cable cars and think “how cute” I’ll move to SF and take those to work. They are pretty much useless, like the trolley cars you see at Disneyland. It’s a big hassle if you work far from your home in the city what with the hills, etc.
But that is the reality for many who want to live in the city. Except for the very well off hard to afford the parking.
Yep. Wife and I lived in the Bay Area (Foster City, Berkeley, then Walnut Creek) for several years before the move to AUS. You pretty much have to own a car unless home and work are both in central SF, or near a BART stop. Which means CCs are alive and well there, both through necessity (the cost of living) and choice (the eccentricity of some of the towns).
I’ll actually chime in as the person that actually lives here. One, the 80s/90s cars in this posts are still on the cusp of being ordinary used cars here for dirt cheap, compared to rusted out heaps that you haven’t seen in the rest of the country for years.
And for those that live in the inner older more urban ring of San Francisco, having a classic car as your only car isn’t that insane if you live in the non-tourist parts of San Francisco (like The Richmond/Sunset/Portola/Excelsior) Or Alameda/Oakland/Berkeley/Albany/San Leandro/Hayward where you are no less than 35 minutes outside of San Francisco by public transit, if you work there.
The dramatic shift to seeing no classics happens where public transit stops being reliable. Ironically the more classically affluent areas of the Bay Area, like Walnut Creek and beyond, and my home of the Peninsula, are relative deserts of curbside classics. Note, almost all of the cars that I’ve written about here are cars that people drive on a semi-regular basis.
That makes sense, that if you don’t have to drive much it’s more likely you might have an older car as a DD. That’s what we were talking about the other day with Paul’s son’s GF, a college student.
Folks were saying an old 80s car like the 190E is no good as your only car unless you wrench it yourself or pay huge sums to a mechanic. Just not true.
In LA public transit is in its infancy and there are old cars everywhere.
I’m an SF native, live in Marin, and work in the SF FiDi. To my eyes, the cars featured here could be called “curbside commons” (at least the volvo, mercedes, and acuras). I’m almost certain they’re DDs, as they are very common, and CA weather is extra forgiving on older vehicles. Their owners are most likely NOT car enthusiasts, but rather someone who inherited them from a friend/relative and drives fewer than 5k miles a year. Sure, they may appreciate the inherent CC qualities, but it’s really just a low cost beater-run about.
I agree with Laurence, most people with newer cars tend to be commuters. The predominance of priuses and comfy luxury cars exist mostly because these are quality commuting vehicles. Long commutes and lots of traffic = want for high comfort and/or good mileage. If you live in SF and have a car just for jaunts around the city, something like an old mercedes, BMW, or classic beetle would be perfect… just nothing too nice as it’ll be exposed to lots of curb rash and bumper dings. I’ve known lots of people who live/work in SF who fit this mold.
I disagree that the “classically affluent” areas are devoid of CC’s. Maybe they have fewer boring CC’s, like the ones pictured (sorry, I love them but it’s all relative), but this is where you’ll find the really really cool old cars like the 500e I saw last week, classic M cars and other BMWs, that sort of thing. Having those cars really requires 2+ parking spaces, one for your classic air cooled porsche and a second for your commuter prius (maybe a third for your wifes rx). Difficult to manage that when a basic shack w/ MAYBE one parking space in SF costs $800k… plus SF driving sucks. So I’d argue the upper crust CCs are more of a greater Bay Area, non-city thing, while the everyday CCs may be more common in SF.
EDIT: I guess keeping the car in parking makes it a “garage classic,” so maybe I’m missing the point…
Yeah, I see “upper crust” classics trailered in and out of car shows, and maybe on a Sunday on a street near a wine bar or an Apple Store. There’s rings to the bay area, but I say by the time you hit Burlingame on the Peninsula there’s not much in the way of CCs til you get to San Carlos, then it dissipates again til you get to San Jose.
East Bay it drops off once you get through the Caldecott, because that’s still the epitome of Suburban hell, with all the planned obsolescence inherent to that life. Marin County seems a variable of that, but you get over to Petaluma/Sonoma county, it relaxes a bit.
I have to say in most of the posts I’ve done for Curbside Classic, my real variety of scores have come from the cities I listed, plus San Carlos/Redwood City. The affluent enthusiasts are more likely to have something exotic old or new, like at least a Mercedes, Alfa Romeo or BMW, and as their income increases the more rarefied the exotic becomes.
The more working/middle/striving/Hipster enthusiasts are the ones that might have something interesting like a 1963 Lark or a 1960 Saratoga and drives it at least part time while working on it.
That 67 Imperial is a gem. There are a lot of Imperials in California, much more so than there population even indicates. My 81 came from California, there are active Imperial clubs in the state whereas in a lot of states you are hard pressed to even find one…
That Plymouth Caravelle is correctly styled that way. There is one in my old neighborhood I see it regularly when I am visiting old friends. I think about 50% of them were light blue followed by white and them a light gold metallic. New Yorkers and E Class of that vintage seem to almost all be silver. Dodges seem to be darker colors, perhaps that was a behinds-the-scenes product differentiation strategy.
I suspect one of the Integras will be next CC, as the author has an Acura fetish.
You never see many caravelle’s out on the road anymore and yet for time it was sold in the USA(from 85-88) it sold good enough with 133,677 made (according to the production figures at the Mopar site) It must have need a throwaway car which if the engine or trans had a hint of trouble it was junked
In my immediate family we had three different Plymouths built between 1985 and 1987 (one purchased new, two acquired used) that were all that same light blue color. An ’85 Turismo (mine), an ’86 Reliant (my grandmother’s), and an ’87 Sundance (my parents’). I used to wonder if Chrysler had gotten some kind of massively discounted bulk rate on it….
steel blue metallic…close relative to gunmetal gray
i think my lebaron was the same color 86
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I’ll take the LeSabre and Imperial please.
Me too,great read and pictures thank you
Have not seen a pop-up headlamp Integra in a looooooong time, same for the Legend hardtop coupe, that was a pretty nice car.
Id take that 1st gen legend in a heartbeat. When I first moved back to the east side of this country there was a little old.lady who owned the identical one to the one pictured. She used it daily for trips to the grocery store and the post office. I used to see her almost every day at either stop. One day I gave her my number and asked her to keep me in mind when she considered selling it, I remember seeing her only a few more times before she passed away. One of her sons found my card while cleaning the car and phoned to tell me the car would be auctioned off and gave me an address. I showed up but the car quicky flew passed what I could pay for it and went to its new owner. It was a very clean pearl white on tan leather 5spd car. that I hope is still being taken care of as well as the first owner took care of it. But somehow I doubt that is the case.
I don’t see too many Legends that get all hacked up and cartoonish; it’s probably in good hands. Integras, not so much.
The Legends were fairly large and had V6 which did not lend itself to ricification that smaller cars do. Same with Honda, hardly ever see a modified Accord but by contrast, hard to find a virgin Civic over 10 years old.
Those Legends are brilliant cars, and tough. Between the big greenhouse, comfy seats, and mindlessly accurate handling, both just feel ‘right’ to drive. You could lose hours on an interstate.
Make mine a 2nd-gen. The 1st-gen’s power steering would suddenly go crazy-light below 10 mph–a little too eager to help with parking.
2nd generation acura legend sedan and coupe prettiest car designs to come out of a manufacturer. Interesting to see that all those early acuras have become so rare. Love SF as strict as Ca standards every trip amazes me with what I see. last trip out I saw a mint Fiat 600 parked on street.
As a Californian I can say, “Meh!” to this collection. This stuff is every day, no big deal, not worthy of mention.
Wanna ses the cool stuff? The rare, the obscure and the “you don’t see those very often” come out of the garage and cruise around on every sunny weekend. From a Datsun F10 to a Ferrari F40 you will find them when the sun shines (almost every day) and the traffic thins out (now THAT is rare out here). Cars and Coffee is for amateurs and poseurs. Sit on the patio of any Starbucks and let the automotive history lesson drive by.
Will agree with those who live there now (or like me, off and on since childhood); the late ’80s Bimmers, Japanese Cars, Volvos, etc. are the common 2nd car or urban “beater” . . . . all over the place in the Bay Area where, back east or up in the rust belt/central – eastern Canada, those cars rusted away and were used up, spat out and junked. The real curbside classics do abound, but much more so in the East Bay and Sonoma County (or south) as San Francisco, parking is a privelege . . . . don’t even THINK about driving into the city on a weekend. Sure – traffic on the weekend won’t be bad; there just won’t be anywhere to PARK!! . . . . My last few years in the Bay Area were spent in Alameda. If I wanted to go somewhere in the City on a weekend, I took the ferry (usually this meant a ball game).
I think the better question here is: “Who in the h-e-double hockey sticks can afford to live in San Francisco?!?!?!”
You guys would hate my town. The traffic is different with Packards and 30s Buicks in daily use ferrying tourists about or you can hire classic cars to self drive google Hooters classic car hire Napier NZ and feast yore eyes.
Just looked. Perhaps the only place on earth where you can rent a Hupmobile?
*googles “hooters”*
I’ll be in my bunk.
Until I read it again, I was all mixed up by the “self driving” classic cars, so you can hire a self driving car through Google to take you to Hooters? Wha…
when I went to sanfrancisco in early 90s,seeing a Peugeot 504(or404)was very common in bay area.as I was crossing a street I happened to notice a for sale sign on a 69 404 station wagon for 1200 bucks or best offer!i did not waste any time&called the number from a phonebooth nearby,long story short ended up paying 900 cash to the old gentleman(original owner),changed the oil&fresh fluid in rear diff&manual trans&drove it back to Greensboro(NORTH CAROLINA)sweet little town which I used to live.i have had more than 48 cars in my life&still after 20 some years my little wagon is my favorite car I have ever had.good times.
The older Integras don’t surprise me terribly. But when was the last time anyone saw a Vigor? That would be an interesting subject.
It only seems like yesterday: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-asian/curbside-classic-1992-1994-acura-vigor-the-closest-thing-to-a-real-four-door-hardtop/
There’s several around here.
The girlfriend of good friend of mine drives one. I don’t know her well but I still hope to drive it at some point.
of *a* good
In 1980 I had a job in the San Francisco area and ended up renting a one bedroom apartment on Bay and Stockton on Fisherman’s Wharf for $500 a month. Came with underground parking. To me, that was worth the price of admission. I loved the area-North Beach, China Town, Basque restaurants in the Tenderloin. Plus, since I lived so close to the Bay, I heard ships’ foghorns just about every night as misty (and chilly) nights were the norm. I’ve always thought that San Francisco is the most beautiful city in the US. I spent half my day working in Hayward-not so beautiful.
Nice assortment! Of course I like the 242. It looks to be later than a ’77 as it has the chrome trim around both the headlights and the grille. In ’81 the 242 got quad lamps and a square grille; Dad had one in maroon with a beige interior.
I have not seen a two-door 240 in a long time. I also like that aqua 190, and, of course, love the Imperial.
If you had the time (or ever do again), cross the Bay Bridge. Spend a day driving around Berkeley, Oakland, San Leandro, Hayward, San Lorenzo and (especially) Alameda. You’ll see dozens upon dozens of usually much OLDER daily driving Curbside Classics. 40’s, 50’s and 60s. All over place. Some crummy, most good to wow, damn!!