Reminds me of the time I had an accident with my ... insurance agent. At least, giving him the papers was rather quick !

In those days the freeways were still in the future, although there is a sign at left, on the far corner, that says, "DANGER BRIDGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION." We must assume they meant the new elevated freeway along 6th Street, one block south. Drivers from the west, from the Bay Bridge distribution structure*, entered Oakland eastward along 7th, as seen here, after traveling southbound along old Cypress Street, later made famous by the collapse of its elevated freeway during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. (Westbound drivers used 8th Street to get to Cypress Street and the Bay Bridge.)

*Known today as the "MacArthur Maze."

A buddy of mine had two Studebakers. I seem to recall that one of them was a "Golden Hawk" and the other--non-drivable, for-parts version was a "Silver Hawk." The Golden Hawk could burn through two quarts of oil between Boulder and Fort Collins. We called it "Smokey of the Carbon Footprints".

I had one uncle who never bought anything but Studebakers and another who never bought anything but Packards. They were completely at a loss by the early '60s.

A beautiful Hawk just visible through the older Stude's rear window.

My first car was a 1951 Studebaker just like this one. V8-powered it, was nicknamed a 2-row corn-picker.

That's a '51 Studebaker based on the flush grilles. The '50 looked pretty much the same except the grilles were recessed. The styling was much more sedate in '49 and they were toned down considerably in '52.

All in all they were good, reliable cars but a little intense in styling.

I was brought home for the first time from the hospital in a dark blue '51 Champion.

Great photo. Thanks for sharing this one Dave, it's nice to see the rest of the picture. I'm always curious when you post some of these accident photos if there are more images of the scene. I love this site more every day.

That's a 1951 "bullet nose" Studebaker probably equipped with a V-8. This was Studebaker's new "Forward Look" in its lineup. The '51s were very similar to the 1950 models, but the bullet nose was slightly modified and it had a single-piece windshield. I owned an entry-level 1950 Champion Deluxe and a 1958 three-quarter ton Transtar pickup for many years. Both were equipped with an indestructible flathead 6-cylinder engine. Not the most powerful 6 around but it certainly did the job. One of the best things about these "Stewdies" was the hill-holder that prevented the car from rolling back on a hill when you shifted into first as you were leaving from a standstill.

View looks west on 7th, a one-way street eastbound to this day, with the two corner buildings still there. Looks like freeway construction and urban renewal got everything else. Grove Street was renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Way sometime in the 1980s.