General Motors Co. announced today that negotiation for the sale of Saab has fallen through and that they intend to discontinue the brand. It reminded me of the Saab sedan I purchased in 1973.
My first wife Gail and I moved to Oklahoma City that year. She never liked my green 1967 Mustang and had soon talked me into buying a new car. The first place we visited was the Saab dealership in Midwest City. I didn’t know much about Saabs except what I had read in Sports Car Graphic Magazine but a fast-talking young salesman soon convinced us we couldn’t live without the strange looking Swedish car with an even stranger name.
The dealership sold other brands and had only a single Saab on the lot, a bright orange two-door sedan. The little four-banger was grossly underpowered and never got much more than twenty miles per gallon but it did have comfortable bucket seats, the driver’s side heated. It was also front wheel drive and handled well in the ice and snow.
The orange Saab is the car Mickey, Nancy, Gail and I took to New Mexico the first time I went skiing. Later, Gail and I took a two week vacation in the vehicle, driving all the way to Montana and back. I loved the sporty sedan with its four-on-the-floor stick shift and remember the vacation as one of the best two weeks of my seven year marriage to Gail.
Gail and I drove the car to Vivian, Louisiana in 1974 to attend my tenth high school reunion. The car is long gone, a single photo my only remaining visual memory. Gail and I are standing in front of the Saab. She is dressed in a short skirt. Me, I’m dressed in a twenty dollar seersucker leisure suit, a white belt holding up my pants, and wearing white suede shoes.
As I heard the news from General Motors today, I thought about my own Saab and I feel regret for the demise of a memorable car maker the like of which the world will never again experience.
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