In an article in the August, 2010 issue of VairForce, the monthly newsletter for Bay State Corvair Club, BSCC member David Silvia discusses the lack of romance in cars built since 1972 despite their improved performance, efficiency and reliability and thus nobody has the kind of affection for them that people do for cars built before that milestone. It is an interesting article, the gist of which can be interpreted from the following excerpt:
When have you ever heard anyone reminisce about his or her old Chevy Citation? When is the last time you even saw a Chevy Citation? Nearly three decades have gone by since any carmaker really made anything that anyone cared about. Sure, there were Corvettes, Porsches, and the like that were built, but even they pale in comparison to the same cars built before 1972. Sure, today’s cars are safer, more efficient, more reliable and last longer, but somehow it doesn’t matter.
The other day on travel for work I rented a new Camaro. Was it cool? Yes. Did I like the car? Yes. It was nice, but still something was missing. It was fast and it very smoothly went from 0-60 mph; much faster than my Corvair. However, it all seemed antiseptic. The ride was smooth, there was no roar from the exhaust, the engine made little noise, and the speed was barely detectable. It is progress, but it came at the cost of the romance.
I ponder this idea as I consider preserving at least one of my two Saturns. I have a 1993 SW2 wagon, which is of the first generation of Saturn S-Series cars (it is actually the first year of Saturn wagons). The lines of the car are still cool to me
1993 Saturn SW2
My SW2 happens also to be an art car (I mention this in an earlier post). While I don’t have quite the affection for this car as I do for my Corvair, I still think it’s a pretty cool little car. It has a timeless style to it. It’s quick, handles great and has been ultra-reliable, needing very little service other than maintenance and replacement of wear items. It is also going on 19 years old, the past 11 of them in New England, including the winters, and before that spent part of its life in New Jersey and Virginia. The body panels are all plastic, so they don’t rust; s0me components do (see earlier post about the subframe), but are relatively easily replaceable.
Unlike some newer cars that Dave mentions, it does make a fair amount of noise (and was criticized for that in the automotive press) and is actually quite fun to drive.
Furthermore, the Saturn car company represented something in the American car marketplace that was worth remembering and preserving. At the time of Saturn’s introduction in the 1991 model year, the reputation of American small cars was at its nadir. Ever since the Chevy Vega and the Ford Pinto, there were nearly two decades of poor quality, poor design, unreliable and generally miserable little cars that had all but given the small car market entirely to the imports, especially those from Japan.
GM decided to imitate the Japanese model of car companies. Upper management wore the same coveralls that the workers on the assembly line wore. Furthermore, the United Auto Workers union (UAW) was actually a partner in the ownership of the new Saturn Corporation (a subsidiary of GM). In fact, brochures from the early years of Saturn (up to about 1999) featured the UAW logo next to the Saturn logo. Rather than the usual hierarchical approach employed by GM, the focus in the new company was teamwork and accountability.
Safety, reliability, economy, environmental-mindedness, ease of maintenance were all high priorities in the initial design. Also, an aesthetic that would appeal to buyers of imports was also part of the plan so that buyers who would never think of buying a GM (or other American) car would be enticed by the new compact. The owners of the Saturn S-series cars were so passionate about their cars and the Saturn company that many people drove their Saturns great distances to two “Homecomings” to the Saturn manufacturing plant in Spring Hill Tennessee (the last one being in 1999, which I was, regrettably unable to attend). There are a lot of other things I could say about the Saturn story, but this post is meant to be more generic than about Saturn in particular. However, a nice piece about the history and demise of Saturn was written by Charlie, the administrator of the website www.saturnfans.com in this article: Goodbye Saturn, Thanks for the Ride 1985-2010.
The point here is that Saturn, the car and the company, represent something significant in automotive history worth remembering and preserving.
When the Corvair was discontinued in 1969, there were people already collecting the cars, seemingly immediately after their production was ceased. The Corvair Society of America (CORSA) was founded in 1969 according to CORSA’s website. Parts are still readily available for Saturns, though for how long, we don’t know. As yet, there is no “Cal Clark” of the Saturn world. Online conversations with forum members of Saturnfans.com yielded such comments as
“There were never any Saturns that were destined for collectible status – no convertibles, no muscle cars, no wicked turbos except for the Sky.”
and
“Please, I wish that Saturn community will move on,I have a wonderful saturn that I need to get rid of, Move on folks, move on, thanks”
[UPDATE: I'll make a comment on the above comments and note that on the S-series forum of Saturnfans.com and have noticed a heartwarming number of people fixing up old S-series Saturns and keeping the ones they have going. Saturn people are in many ways like many Corvair people in that they are frugal and practical and find the cars easy to maintain and repair and reliable and economical to operate. I have been heartened by a small but dedicated group of do-it-yourselfers who keep their cars going. ]
All of this brings me to the point I’m trying to make, which is a bit of a counter point to Dave Silvia’s article: It’s not just the cars, but the people.
The keepers of the flame of the cars of the past 30 years are the young people today who grew up with the cars, or who grew up with cars that were a little newer and thus found the cars that were a little older than the cars they grew up with to be exotic. Or perhaps the first car they learned to drive in was a hand-me-down or used car from that era. Dave is right that there are many cars over that period that were not worthy of affection, but some were and still are. Even using the maligned Citation he mentions…. I had two Buick Skylarks that were the Buick clones of the Chevy Citation, one from 1980 and the other 1981. I liked those cars, especially the 1980, which was a coupe, “Limited” trim with the 2.8 liter V6 and a 4-speed stick, with the wire spoked hubcaps, much like the one in this photo:
1980 Buick Skylark Limited Coupe
I put 134,000 miles on it before it needed a new clutch, windshield and battery. It still ran great and the body was still solid, though, sadly, it had no value in the marketplace so I couldn’t even give it away, given the cost of the necessary repairs, so I ended up junking it at 10 years old. The 1980s Buick Regal coupes are also cars very worthy of collecting and restoring today, IMHO.
- 1986 Buick Regal T-Type
When I was growing up, I just loved old cars. I thought they were cool just because they were old and different than the cars of the day. Even the most ordinary (for their day) old cars. Most younger car enthusiasts of today seem to be only interested in specialty cars… high-end sports cars or other cars that are fast. Any other old car (including any before 1972) doesn’t hold their interest (gross generalization, but mostly true).
To put it another way, in the 1970s, when Corvairs were recently discontinued, I am certain that there were a lot of older “car guys” who would have scoffed at the notion of collecting a car like the Corvair when it seemed pedestrian to them when they were far more interested in the cars of their youth, from say the 1930s or 1940s. Likewise, today it makes sense that cars from the 1980s or 1990s seem too contemporary (and thus ordinary) to the car guys (and women) in their 50s-60s or beyond. But to young adults who grew up with their parents having cars from that era, the cars from the 1980s and 1990s should be the beloved old cars of their youth.
It just seems to me that the whole notion of collecting/restoring everyday cars is an alien concept to people born after 1980. There is a lack of reverence for old cars just for their being old (and thus unique) as well as bringing back memories of their childhood. I think that some of it has to do with the pace of technological improvement over the past 30 years making the older cars seem (and be) inferior to the newer ones… collecting old cars seems about as cool to younger people today as collecting old computers. Who would want to use a computer from the 1980s today? I think that mentality is at play for many younger people today and is more likely to blame for the lack of cars from this era being collected and restored than are the cars themselves.
