Car Lust

Rambler/AMC Marlin

Remember the Marlin, AMC's answer to the Mustang?

Don't be embarrassed if you don't. It's not exactly at the forefront of modern collector-car consciousness.

Truth be told, the Marlin didn't get a whole lot of attention even back when it was in production. There were 17,419 Marlins built in the three years it was on the market--contrasted with production of well over 1.6 million Mustangs in the same period. We call cars in this market segment "pony cars" (and not "fishmobiles") for a good reason.

While it could never match the Mustang in terms of sales, or visibility, or performance, or (let's not mince words here) good looks, the Marlin is a perfect Car Lust car, with the sort of endearing quirkiness we love around these parts. The story of the Marlin also has some surprising ties to professional baseball and national politics.

That last bit may sound a little, ah, fishy, but I assure you it's, um, for reel.

Great Commercials--SsangYong Rodius

We recently had our fun mocking the bizarre looks of the SsangYong Odious--er, I mean Hideous--no, no, I mean Rodius!--a Korean-built SUV whose ah, challenging styling almost makes the Aztek look normal. That posting included a surreal Korean TV commercial in which the very oceans themselves rage against it.

That's not the only Rodius commercial to appear on Korean television. In the course of writing that article, I watched the others, and some of them are--you won't believe this, but it's true!--they're quite good.

I'm not being ironic. The commercials are very good. The car is hideous, but the commercials do an admirable job of making it look ... dare I say it? ... not just normal but ... almost (but not quite) ... desirable.

Don't believe me? Keep reading.

It's Official--Saab Saved!

I'm taking a few seconds off from dancing in my cubicle to help spread the word--GM's rumored sale of Saab to small Dutch carmaker Spyker is now official. As always, Saab United is the right place to go for the latest news and analysis.

The rumored deal seemed to have picked up momentum over the last few days, but now, with Saab's $564 million loan from the European Investment Bank guaranteed, the $400 million sale has been finalized.

I love this quote from the Reuters story linked above; it's not often you see commentary as scathing as this in a Reuters news story:

"It's a really brilliant brand. It's probably one of the biggest brand mismanagement stories in the history of the automotive industry," said Tim Urquhart, analyst at IHS Global Insight. "Saab could have been the Swedish Audi if it had been taken on in the right way 20 years ago. It's been completely mismanaged, underinvested in by people who don't understand what the brand means, and what it has the potential to mean."

It's too soon to know exactly what this means; it's hard to imagine that a tiny company like Spyker will have the resources to keep (make?) Saab a relevant mainstream brand. But, if Saab traded volume for quirkiness, I for one would be satisfied. And right now, I'm just pleased that the brand is surviving.

--Chris H.

Sebring-Vanguard CitiCar

Following on my post on the GM EV1, I ended up poking around a little more in the world of electric cars and, given my adoration for nearly all things '70s (vehicles anyway; well, some other stuff, too), I started looking into a little-known company that was, at one time the fifth (or sixth, estimates vary) largest automobile manufacturer, by volume, in the US--Sebring-Vanguard and its most famous product, the CitiCar. Like the EV1, I don't really lust after this car, although I hope one day to see one up close. At more than 2,500 units sold, this is the most successful electric car of the modern era and may be the reason why the electric-car idea gained momentum late in the century.

To be honest, I'm still not sure whether this was a good or a bad thing. For a lot of people, it may have functioned much as I argued the EV1 had, convincing people that an electric car could be practical for many everyday driving chores. For many, on the other hand, its diminutive size and lack of any real creature comforts also could have set the idea back significantly by creating the impression that electric cars were little more than slightly accessorized golf carts, worthwhile only for shuffling senior citizens to and from the shuffleboard parks within their retirement communities.

Be that as it may, I think it's worthwhile to take a look back and see how this little car came about and what it might say about our current efforts to create and sell non-petroleum-powered cars. If nothing else, we might get a smile or two out of just looking at the thing.

GM EV1

Once again I find myself taking a little-traveled off-ramp to venture forth into limited-production car territory and have a look at an automobile that made a big splash but never quite made it into full production. The GM EV1 has engendered its share of fanatics, both pro and con, which makes it a bit different from the old Chrysler Turbine (though turbines in general still have their fans). The Turbine also didn't create its own mythos of evil corporate executives, pliant politicians, and heroically earnest C-list Hollywood celebrities in the years after its discontinuation.

I'm not sure if I'd call this missive a car lust exactly. I've always taken a rather cynical view of electric cars, having my early hopes for them continually dashed as the reality always failed to live up to the promise. It seems that practical electric cars are, like fusion power, always a few years away from becoming reality. We are constantly teased with promises of 200-mile ranges, only to see that drop to  the usual 50-70 when driven in real-world conditions when the driver has the temerity to turn on the radio or another electric accessory (Bad driver! No heat for you!). Or, alternatively the cars cost so much that only green-oriented megazillionaires can establish their Street-Green cred by driving 10 miles to the latest red carpet ceremony. 

Still, even though Chrysler's Turbine never had much hope for becoming a real-world product, it still interested me enough to write a post about it; and the same is true of the EV1. In a lot of ways, it was an engineering marvel, incorporating various technologies that have since become de rigueur in many models. In my view, it's not necessary for a concept or limited-production vehicle to go into actual production for it to be considered a success; if it does the job of proving the efficacy (or not) of certain technologies then it has performed its function well.

In Defense of the Electric Car

Since I spent yesterday waxing ecstatic about today's gasoline-powered, internal-combustion-engined cars, I'm going to spend today doing the same with what I think is tomorrow's car--the electric car. Though I should probably start off by clarifying that by "tomorrow" I mean, oh, probably 10-30 years from now.

I'm titling this "In Defense of the Electric Car" not just because it creates a nice parallel with my previous post, but because I really think the concept of an electric car needs defending. Just as today's cars have their share of detractors, so do hybrids and full electric cars. Within the automotive enthusiast community, hybrids and full electric cars seem to have become political and social symbols with pretty significant baggage. While I get that, I think it's a shame--it's not hard to imagine an extremely cool electric car.

Before I start, please realize that I'm not a mechanical or electrical engineer. Nor am I particularly well-informed. I'm just a wild-eyed car enthusiast who loves technology and is armed with excitement and, probably, a lot of bad information. Please feel free to correct my ignorance and flights of fancy in the comments.

A few great cars on Bring a Trailer ...

Several months ago, Cookie the Dog's Owner put up a post highlighting other great sites in the blogosphere that Car Lust readers might enjoy. One of the sites mentioned in the comments is Bring a Trailer, which highlights the wild, weird and fantastic in the used-car world. It's basically a daily, higher-budget version of our infrequent used-car challenges.

For those of you who don't receive the BaT daily e-mails, I wanted to share one of yesterday's featured listings--a Group A Ford Sierra Cosworth rally car, formerly driven by rally great Carlos Sainz. If the Sierra's basic shape looks familiar, it's because it was the car exported to the United States as the Merkur XR4Ti. The difference is that while the Merkur came with the goofy but highly endearing biplane spoiler, the fire-breathing Cosworth version never made it across the pond--a real shame, since it was a hot car for its time.

So, just to reiterate--this is a Sierra Cosworth in Ford works livery, and with real competition history, formerly driven by one of the great rally drivers of all time (and who only days earlier won the Dakar Rally). I'm gobsmacked.

It still hasn't dethroned my all-time favorite BaT car, though. The car holding that title is this absolutely gorgeous 1968 Citroen DS21 Pallas. Oh ... my goodness.

 

--Chris H.
 

In Defense of the Gasoline-Powered Internal Combustion Engine

I would like to kick off this post with two breathtakingly broad generalizations. My first generalization is that we live in an amazing time, in which the human race has made miraculous leaps in the fields of information, communication, transportation, medicine, and entertainment--to say nothing of feeding and clothing ourselves. My second generalization is that we have a bad habit of taking these advances for granted.

This is by no means a new opinion--comedian Louis C.K., for one, has a real knack for pinpointing the absurdity in this. Here, for example, are his thoughts on air travel:

“I was on an airplane recently and there was high-speed Internet on the airplane. That’s the newest thing that I know exists. And I’m sitting on the plane, and they go ‘Open up your laptop and you can go on the Internet.’ and it’s fast, and I’m watching YouTube clips--it's amazing, I’m in an airplane! And then it breaks down, and they apologize. The guy next to me goes “Psshhhh. This is bull****.” Like how quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only ten seconds ago! ...

"Flying is the worst one because people people come back from flights, and they tell you their story. And it's like a horror story. It's--they act like their flight was like a cattle car in Germany in the '40s: that's how bad they make it sound. They're like "it was the worst day of my life ... first of all, we didn't board for twenty minutes, and then we get on the plane, and they made us sit there! On the runway! For forty minutes! We had to sit there." Oh, really? What happened next? Did you fly through the air incredibly, like a bird? Did you you partake in the miracle of human flight, you non-contributing zero? That you got to FLY?? YOU'RE FLYING! It's amazing! Everybody on every plane should just constantly be going, "OH MY GOD! WOW!" You're flying! You're sitting in a chair in the sky.

"But (the chair) doesn't--it doesn't go back a lot ... and the chair's really..." You know, here's the thing: people might say there's delays on flights. Delays? Really? New York to California in five hours. That used to take 30 years to do that. And a bunch of you would die on the way there and have a baby. You'd be a whole different group of people by the time you got there. Now you watch a movie and you take a dump and you're home.”

This is all funny because it's true; and I think it's especially true of modern cars and their motive force, the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine.

It's not a particularly fashionable time to write a pro-car treatise. Cars, their engines, and their fuel are blamed for a variety of sins--polluting the environment; distorting our foreign policy; requiring ugly and expensive roads; encouraging social deviancy; killing off drivers, pedestrians and wildlife; and hurting small business in small downtowns by encouraging sprawl. Here in Seattle, for example, a rather vocal portion of the populace has argued that we don't need to replace a major highway through the city despite our existing problems with congestion. The thought is that the resulting level of gridlock would serve an ostensibly worthwhile purpose of getting some cars off the road.

Here's the thing--a lot of those complaints have merit. Today's cars do have their downsides--particularly environmentally. After all, cars take a lot of energy and materials to build. To make them run you need a variety of toxic fluids, any of which can contaminate water and ground, and most of which need to be extracted from land situated in a politically volatile part of the world. Gasoline, the most central of these, adds a nasty pollution cocktail to the atmosphere when burned. 

This all true, but I think it misses the larger point. Cars cause problems because there are just so many of them--their impact is multiplied by the sheer, staggering scale of their ubiquity. They are everywhere, and that's because they're fantastic at mobilizing us and giving us the freedom of movement. Today's car and its gasoline-powered internal combustion engine is essentially a miracle with some rough edges; and while we should acknowledge and work towards removing those rough edges, I want to take some time to recognize the miracle.

Jan. 18 Weekly Open Thread

As usual, this is the place for conversation that doesn't belong anywhere else.

Some possible food for thought:

• Volkswagen just became the majority owner of Suzuki. The two companies plan to share components and parts development costs, and Suzuki will now buy its diesels from VW. Me, I'd like to see a "Samurai Edition" New Beetle with accessory katanas.

• Autoblog speculates that one of the Chinese or Indian manufacturers may try to sell cars in the U.S. in some fashion other than through the traditional franchised dealership. What might that look like? Factory-direct storefronts? Cars at Wal-Mart or Target? Would you buy a vehicle that way?

• It appears that even the most last-ditch efforts to save Saab have come to nought, and the brand will cease to exist. GM vice-chairman Bob Lutz delivers the eulogy: “If you want to earn a small fortune on Saab, you have to start with a huge fortune.” The Saab fans don't call him "Mr. Sensitivity" for nothing, I suppose.

• The Chinese government's approval is required before GM can sell Hummer to a Chinese buyer. That approval is being held up indefinitely by unspecified "regulatory issues," while Hummer production has ceased. Those of you inclined to mourn the end of the world's most extroverted and in-your-face line of trucks can borrow some Kleenex from the Saab fans if they have any left.

--Cookie the Dog's Owner

BRP Can-Am Spyder Roadster

What is this vehicle? A motorcycle? Car? Convertible? All or none of the above? Or is it the next big thing? Geez, even the states are having trouble defining it.

To operate this vehicle, California and Delaware require only a car license, while Washington state has a Three-Wheel Permit. The other 47 say you've got to have a motorcycle license. No word yet on Washington, D.C.

It's built by BRP (Bombardier Recreational Products), the fine folks who bring you Sea-Doo watercraft, Ski-Doo snowmobiles, Can-Am ATVs, Johnson and Evinrude boat motors, and, of course, the Learjet. BRP has been a subsidiary of Bombardier since 2003, and there haven't been any BRP motorcycles since 1983.