I'm heartbroken over my car.
Let me explain. The lease on my 2008 Saab 9-3 SportCombi is up at the end of June '10, and I'll be turning it in and most likely getting a Chevy Traverse. The Traverse is a fine vehicle - I've driven my parent's Buick Enclave (same car, basically) for the last week, and had nary a problem. Roomy, handles well, meets all my needs, and then some. I'll finally be able to offer rides to others, and the kids won't have their knees under their chins.
But it's not my Saab. It doesn't shoot out like a rocket when you tap the accelerator. It doesn't hug the curves when you (accidentally, of course) find yourself taking an offramp at greater than the posted speed. It doesn't stop on a dime. And it doesn't get those "what kind of car is that?" rubbernecker stares when you're driving. The Traverse is a good, sensible, reasonably stylish car for a SAHM whose primary function is taxi driver. Which is me. I completely fit the expected demographic for this vehicle.
Now, I'm not sure what the actual demographic for Saab owners is (and I think it varies widely) but somehow, I like the feeling of being, well, just a little bit different. Odd, perhaps, in a funky, quirky sort of way. I like the sentiments expressed in an article in the Financial Times:
Individuality – a kind of Swedish, unpretentious individuality – therefore lurks in many conversations with Saab owners. Tom Barnicoat, the former chief executive of Endemol, the Big Brother production company, has driven Saabs for 25 years. He rhapsodised about one of Saab’s signature eccentricities – the ignition key set in the floor (“It’s so fantastic! It needs no explanation because there is no explanation!”) – before describing Saab as an “anti-brand brand” for people who resist easy categorisation.
The commercial drawback of being an “anti-brand brand”, of course, is that many people drive Saabs precisely because other people don’t. Originality abhors a crowd. On the plus side, however, the cars can end up being whatever their drivers want them to be, even political statements. Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s former chief of staff, is one of Barnicoat’s oldest friends. Powell switched to Saabs in 1994, when he started working for Blair. “It is a suitable car for liberal left people,” he told me. “It’s that kind of car. Not just because it’s Swedish, but because of the sloping back and the history of it.” Do you really mean that? I asked. I had not previously considered the political significance of my car’s sloping back. Powell was adamant. “God, you’d never have a right-wing person driving a Saab. They couldn’t. Could they?” (Knight, Sam, "Why the Saab inspires intense feelings", Financial Times, July 25 2009, emphasis added)
For the record, right-wing people can and do drive Saabs... but this is not a political blog.
Anyway, for the past few months I've been struggling with the idea of giving up my Saab and the self-identity it imbues in favor of practical concerns like passenger capacity and legroom. I had reached an uneasy peace, telling myself that once my kids were grown and I didn't feel the need to move entire kid battalions from one end of town to another, I would get another Saab. I could reassume the quirky identity abandoned in favor of practicality.
Fate is fickle, though, and although the verdict isn't final, but it looks as if Saab the company will soon shut down as part of GM's restructuring. So much for that future, and hence my despair. I know this is silly - for heaven's sake, my youngest is in therapy to overcome her attachment to inanimate objects, and I must repeat "it's just a thing" at least 10 times a day - but I can't seem to shake this irrational attachment to my car.
But, apparently, I can take solace that I am not alone:
The company may never have been a conspicuous financial success, but its cars have always overflowed with feeling. Like Rolex, Apple or Harley-Davidson, there is something mysterious – albeit modest and Scandinavian – about Saab that, over the years, has transcended its marketing and publicity materials and been appropriated by the people who drive the cars....
The fixation is apparently international. After studying 1.2 million postings on “Motor Talk”, Germany’s largest motoring web forum, Rüdiger Hossiep, a psychologist at the University of Ruhr in Bochum, concluded this summer that Saab drivers have the highest levels of “psychological involvement” with their cars: more than 10 times the passion of the average Volkswagen driver. ...
Such things are not easy to explain. When I asked Hossiep, the German psychologist, what lay behind the feelings of Saab drivers for their cars, I almost heard him shake his head down the phone. “It is not objective,” he said. “It is not realistic. Really there are no facts for it.” (ibid.)
So true. There are no facts for it. It makes no sense to want to keep a car that doesn't meet my family's needs. It makes even less sense to keep one that will soon be without a dealership network, and for which parts will become increasingly difficult to find. It's foolish and irrational. No one should be that attached to or defined by a car. It's not healthy.
And still, I know I will cry when I hand over the keys at the end of June, both for the loss of my beloved car and for who I was when I drove it.
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