Posts from ‘Saab’
We don’t normally ask readers to work too hard when they’re checking out classic car ads, but we do have an observation to share: The sporty Fords of the late Eighties were available with a fascinating array of engines.
The bad news is that fewer than one of every hundred cars sold in the United States is a convertible. (I will spare you the fractional math required to pass along the number of manual-transmission-equipped convertibles sold on our shores last year, but it’s fewer still.)
One of the biggest recurring disappointments of my elementary-school days was thinking that I was going to class to see a movie, and finding out I was really going to be sitting through a crappy filmstrip presentation.
There’s almost no glamour to be found in flying these days. The events of September 11, 2001, certainly complicated the process of getting through an airport and onto a commercial flight, but even before that horrible day, flying was becoming more of a grind than an adventure for most travelers. We’ve all heard plenty of jokes about airline food…
For American car guys, Canada can seem like a very foreign place. Not only do our neighbors up north refer to American cheese as processed cheese, or more charitably as “mild cheddar,” they have a history of buying and selling cars that many of us Yankees have never heard of.
Every summer, the Goodguys Rod & Custom Association stages about 20 annual street rod and custom car events at fairgrounds and other large venues across the country. These are sprawling, weekend-long gatherings that include attractions such as swap meets, manufacturer midways, live music, autocross competitions, and plenty of on-premises cruising. They draw huge numbers of participant vehicles and spectators—the larger events regularly surpass 4000 registered show cars.
Maybe you’ve heard of the “runner’s high,” an elusive phenomenon experienced by distance runners and other serious exercise buffs. At some point during a good, long run, an endurance-focused athlete can experience a period of euphoria that, to hear some folks tell it, makes the whole physical-exertion thing more than worth the effort.
The premise underlying Cadillac’s decision to market a subcompact car in the U.S. beginning in 1982 was perfectly sound. The luxury division of General Motors was looking for a way to reach younger consumers, and a smaller, more affordable offering made sense. It would enable the brand to bring new buyers into the fold sooner rather than later, and hopefully those customers would move up to a larger, pricier Cadillac when trade-in time came.