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Very cool, thanks all ! Posted by vtsnaab [Email]  (#26)  [Profile/Gallery]
(more from vtsnaab) on Sun, 28 Sep 2008 03:52:26
In Reply to: Location Location Location......, adamK, Fri, 26 Sep 2008 06:59:07 Members do not see ads below this line. - Help Keep This Site Online - Signup |
Looks like I got the info I desired from a bunch of folks, thanks !
BobS - I agree, and also submit that there are cars aplenty which
are built well - but I think all lack your desired SS exhaust...
Noel, your points about good maintenance are like lovely music and
so very true.
In my experiences I've always seen those cycles too, and the times
when there'd be just small stuff for a long time then a big hit, and
then small stuff again for a long time...
RayV, I remember back when I worked in a foreign car parts store in
the late 70's and we sold ALOT of top end stuff for the Japanese cars
and NONE at all for the Swedes, so your mention of that brings a very
resounding personal note here as well as the reminder that what was
cheap and dinky back then is now very tough and strong !
(And Aeros are in a class all by themselves....)
Hi Adam !
You know, I have a funny thing to report which shows an odd contrast
to your posting, and I'll give the back-story first:
The '91 I now drive came from a local guy (whom I'll NEVER buy from
again...) that knew of it's deficiencies yet stayed 100% firm on it's
price because he knew some local Saab freak like me would pay a bit
too much JUST because it is a '91, and he wagered correctly too.
Now that the back-story has been told, here's the contrast:
My wonderful daily driver has been quite hungry for fairly big stuff
in the mechanical areas - but when one gets under it on a lift one
sees the most amazingly clean (and in places shiny) undercarriage
that could ever be possible for a car which has spent like 90%+ of
it's time in Vermont with heavy salt and soggy weather.
This is the opposite of what one may expect, but it is all true.
The skin has some ugly spots, and it could use a couple of fenders
as a result - but the rear shock towers are completely perfect.
Soon it'll be for sale and I can only hope I can find someone who'll
give it a good home that will put those touches to it now that I've
fed it some heavy cash for a few years and it is solid as a rock ->
at 244k !
I attribute that sturdiness to the good Swedish steel rather than
the place where it's been driven and kept because many, many times
I've seen Saabs and Volvos totally resist the salt damage as if they
actually came from Arizona instead - where other cars turn to rust.
So, maybe the 100k myth had some affirmation back when the Toyotas
and Datsuns (and the new kid on the block....Subarus) were dinky
and had lousy top ends by 80k - but I still have to wonder at the
advent - the very beginning of that idea, and still lean towards my
theory that it began when cars had skinny wheels like horse buggies
and got snarfed up and reaffirmed by the greedy 'big three' to get
the utterly gullible infinite consumers to 'buy new' far too often.
I also submit for thought a memory of the old 'slant six' - which
had originally come in cars which almost never died until their
bodies had rotted to nothing many years later - and then the wise
marketers had an engineering study done and found the 'problem':
that engine's bearings were 5x the size they needed to be for the
engine to fail in a 'normal' manner - so they reduced them hugely,
and in the pre-Mitsubishi K-cars those engines became infamous for
dying in a year (or less....).
The irony I see is that simultaneously the dinky car makers spent
their bucks finding out that the same consumers were sick to death
of dinky cars which lasted just 100k or so, and suddenly they made
amazingly better cars and so since then the lunch the 'big three'
thought they had all sewed up forever has been neatly scarfed down
by those nasty foreigners !!!
(And then Saab and Volvo got scarfed up by GMeCk and Frod, booHoo.)
((But I see they still use crummy steel and lots of the current crop
of giant SUckV's are showing lots of cancer already here...))
Interesting indeed, yes ?
Best Wishes,
mark
, Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:32:19, Sun, 28 Sep 2008 03:52:26 <-- Viewing This Message
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