With Saab’s official passing this past week it seems only appropriate to look back at the reflections of the quirky Swedes from a literary great and one time Saab salesman. Kurt Vonnegut owned and operated Saab of Cape Cod until it closed in 1961 in West Barnstable, Ma giving him plenty of time to reflect on the one of a kind nature of an old Saab.
Whether or not it was the result of growing up on the very road Vonnegut’s dealership was on, I developed an affinity for both the author’s literary work and the two stroke Swedish cars he sold as I got older. For this reason when I read about the death of Saab this past week Vonnegut’s amusingly insightful description of the carmakers roots immediately came to mind:
“The Saab back then was a far cry from the sleek, powerful, four-stroke Yuppie uniform it is today. It was the wet dream, if you like, of engineers in an airplane factory who had never made a car before.”
You can read Kurt Vonnegut’s 2004 reflections on his time as a Saab dealer in full here.
Photo Credits: Saab History, Google Earth