Car Lust

Our Cars Week: "Saab 9000 Aero"

(Submitted by Car Lust reader Julian Santa-Rita)

I have been naming my cars since my first one. Each is its own personality to me. My first was a grey Volvo 240 with velour seats, and I named it " Nigel." Later a 1986 RX-7 I named "Chu-Chu Rocket" passed through my hands. There was a Subaru GL called "Roo-Badoo" and a MKII Jetta who was renamed loads of "happy expletives," depending on whether one or both of us was in a saucy mood that particular moment.

But it took me almost a year to understand my Saab 9000 Aero well enough to finally give it the pet name "E.M.," which was shorthand for "Executive Missile." The relationship began as I left college to move to my new home 1,000 miles away, and I needed to replace the "expletive" Jetta. My father brought me to see this somewhat awkward silver Saab which I’d never even heard of before and I’d certainly never seen one in person. Someone had traded it in on a Subaru WRX.

Car Lust Classic--1986-1992 Saab 9000 Turbo

Originally published by Chris Hafner on December 30, 2008.

When Saab debuted the 9000 in 1986, it raised some eyebrows. It's not often that a car garners attention because of its normalcy; but such is the case when a noted oddball carmaker like Saab introduces a car so seemingly bone-stock conventional as the 9000.

Saab had always been known for cars with profiles that could best be described as quirky. From the early 92 and 95, to the swoopy Sonnetts, to the swollen and hunchbacked 99 and 900, Saabs looked different than normal cars and were seemingly proud of that fact. By contrast, the 9000 was clean and attractive but otherwise unremarkable by the standards of 1986. The aero headlights and the smoothly contoured sides were handsome and aerodynamic, but reminiscent of the ground-breaking Audi 5000 and Ford Taurus. Without the Saab grille and insignia, it would be difficult to identify the 9000 as a Saab--while the 900, on the other hand, showed its Saab heritage clearly and proudly. Only the five-door hatchback bodystyle betrayed Saab's quirky tendencies.

In another break from non-conformity, the 9000's platform was the result of a joint development effort with three other European carmakers. The 9000's chassis and, in some cases, body panels, were shared with the Alfa Romeo 164, Lancia Thema, and Fiat Croma. Sharing a platform with the likes of Alfa and Lancia doesn't exactly raise the spectre of awful and irrelevant clones like the Cadillac Cimmaron or Mercury Bobcat, but its conventionality was a bit worrying for this slavish Saab-ite. Had Saab sold out and built a bland every-car?

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"The Fast And The Furious" 1970 Dodge Charger

(Submitted by Car Lust reader and commenter Tigerstrypes)

 

It’s amazing how a car steals a scene, even among trendier “hero” cars. The Coke-bottle silhouette of the 2nd-gen Dodge Charger did it again (I don’t know about you but the Charger in ‘Bullitt’ stole my attention from the Mustang) with very little screen-time and no build montage. It sleeps, no, waits, for the moment to get out and beat, no, obliterate new blood (or is it motor oil?) off the streets.

I liked its story: Belonged to Dom's late father and it scared the crap out of Mr. Hi-Performance Imports here of just thinking of driving it (as it should, probably the most realistic thing going on in the movie).

And it’s all downhill from there.

The 2011 Nashville British Car Club Show

It's déjà vu all over again... 366 days have elapsed, but the time passed feels like it's been about an hour. Even the weather is the same as last year--sunny and 82 degrees.

I'm back at the Parthenon in Nashville to see the 2011 Nashville British Car Club Show, and I'm even looking at some of the same cars from 2010.

You may remember last year's 2010 Nashville British Car Club Show also here on Car Lust. The biggest difference between these two classic car shows was that there seemed to be a lot more cars last year. Or, were these entries just spread farther apart? Either way, there was plenty of room to roam between these amazingly preserved automotive specimens from the British Empire.

Facel Vega Excellence

This is no ordinary French luxury car. What's so special about it?

Mon ami, il a un Hemi!*

Studebaker Week: SDC Ohio Chapter 2011 meet

If you've been following Car Lust for a while, you may have noticed that I have a thing for Studebakers. When I heard that the Ohio Chapter of the Studebaker Drivers Club would be having its annual meet in Tallmadge, not far from where I live, there was no question that I'd be going.

The people who put this event on bill it as the largest one-day Studebaker show in the world, and they're probably right. This was not merely a large gathering of Studebakers, this was total Studebaker overload. According to the lady at the registration table, there were 139 Studes and Packards signed in as of about 1:30 in the afternoon, and more kept arriving even after that.

I lost count of the Larks and Avantis, there were so many of them--enough that they'll be getting their own posts in the next couple of days. As for the rest, we'll start the tour after the jump.

BMW M-Car Day at Griot's Garage

On an unseasonably warm day in Tacoma, WA, one of the Amazon Automotive editors had the good fortune to attend BMW M-Car Day at Griot's Garage.  Hosted by the BMW Car Club of America, Puget Sound Region, over 175 M-Cars were featured.  Here are a few of the best pictures we took.

There are 64 more pictures posted on Amazon Automotive's Facebook page.  Which one is your favorite?

August 15 Weekly Open Thread -- Time Travel Edition

As usual, this is the place to talk about anything that comes to mind.

Via Jalopnik and the Endras BMW "Powershift" blog comes the tale of a dealership in Ontario which closed abruptly in 1988 and has been sitting there pretty much intact ever since. By "pretty much intact" we mean "preserved better than the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings." There are two unsold '88 Bimmers (an E28 and 635csi) in the showroom and three or four back in the shop, one of them still up on a lift. Everything else is unchanged over 23 years--it's still Reagan's second term in there!

That's not the first archaeologically preserved automobile dealership I've heard tell of. There's a Toyota dealer in the middle of the "Green Line" demilitarized zone on the island of Cyprus, still filled with "new" cars left behind when the Turkish army invaded in 1974. You can see some interesting photos of dusty, low-mileage Coronas here.

Speaking of time capsules and car dealers, Studebaker Drivers Club member Bob Kabchef wrote a rather cool story for the Club's website in which he went back in time to 1958. We've also had our own fun with time travel here at Car Lust. As I've commented before, possession of a working time machine would enable one to go back and obtain pristine, low-mileage classic cars direct from the dealer, paying pre-inflation prices with post-inflation dollars and setting up some spectacular arbitrage opportunities at the next Barrett-Jackson auction.

How about you? Any similar barn finds, daydreams, or temporal anomalies you'd like to share?

--Cookie the Dog's Owner

Photo by Maxbimmer.com forum member WhadUpp.

The 2011 "FIAT FreakOut" in Nashville, Tennessee

Loyal Car Lust readers may remember the 2010 Nashville British Car Club Show post from last October. Now it's July 23rd, 2011, and I'm back in the shadow of the Parthenon at Centennial Park here in Nashville. But this time it's the Italians who get center stage... presenting the 2011 "FIAT FreakOut," or "FFO" for short.

This was an all-weekend event, four days actually, and the first time Music City USA hosted these friendly folks. They had four days of sightseeing, scheduled driving tours, pool parties, and a car movie. But I don't have an Italian car, so I only wanted to see the car show. And what a show it was!

This was also an international event, as I saw Canadian license plates there. The local TV station said some folks came from England. And from nearby, Jeff Lane of the Lane Motor Museum here in Nashville also brought over a few prized Tuscan beauties.

1976-1979 Cadillac Seville

The only new American car introduced in 1975 seems to have a bug that just won't go away. No, it wasn't a reskinned Chevy Nova, nor did it share its body shell with any other car. This vehicle was unique, a true masterpiece by Cadillac, and conveyed yet another "Standard of the World." It also set GM's styling theme for at least a decade to come, and showed that ingenuity at General Motors in the early 1970s was far from dead.

I've always liked sensibly-sized, four-door sporty cars. Even the Ford Granada ESS caught my eye for a while back in the day, until the reality set in that it was little more than a trim package. Sporty sedans give better-than-average handling and performance, and you can pack one up and go cross-country in comfort with friends if you wish. This Seville seemed to have everything I liked in a car at the time... in droves.

Originally, the Seville was to begin life as a modified Nova, and that's where those rumors began. But in early development, the Cadillac design team decided that the Seville's rear passenger floor area needed about three more inches of legroom than a four-door Nova body offered.

So new rear doors were crafted, the floorpan was changed, and extensive structural modifications were made. GM declared the Seville's body shell as the K-Body, though it did share parts from the Nova's X-Body and the Camaro/Firebird's F-Body.

The first-year Seville had an "eggcrate" grille, similar to the ones in all of the other Cadillacs that year. From the next year on, a more upright grille with vertical bars was fitted. That was just before the customizers found this car and, shall we kindly say... "exagerrated" it.