SAAB, great looking cars with futuristic features!
SAAB is dead?? Damn
SAAB, the car you buy, because, um… …?
They would just last forever
Pontiac
I always tell my wife that if they found a secret warehouse full of old Aztek parts and pumped some new ones out, I’d get one on the spot. I loved that car.
The tent add on would fly these days
My first car. I still want to try out a G8 sometime.
The Swedish Volvo and not the chinese Volvo. I feel like we would have had a power house for electric vhicles with Volvo. Now we are stuck with the French cars. Renault is doing really great. But isn’t Volvo. I feel like Saab would had gone Volkswagen as well, and come too late for the party and die out anyways. But they made good cars as well.
Still don’t know why, but the 240 series will always have a special place in my heart.
(fun detail: Ask any kid around the world to draw a car, and they draw a volvo 240)
I had a Saturn which was a really nice car except for all that stuff under the hood.
Maybe have an EV company buy the branding from it.
Perhaps the ex-Saturn engineers can form a new car company called Uranus. The slogan could be “Uranus: everyone’s hopping in”
There’s so much possibility.
“We’re back”
“Coming from behind”
“Looking behind to move forward”
Etc.
Someone already said SAAB so Mitsubishi
RIP Lancer Evo
Isn’t Mitsubishi still around and kicking? I have no idea how that brand solders on with such low volume and price points.
Technically. But they’re a shell of what they were. Man I’d love to see a new take on a GTO VR4. And why’d they use the Eclipse name like that. :( :(
In the OG Grand Turismo I somehow wound up with a red GTO. I was able to upgrade the thing to something silly like 940 horsepower. It was… great.
In very broad brushes, cars seem to be getting both more boring and higher performance. The Evo, Celica, Camaro (again), Sky/Solstice, S2000, MR2, STI (the new one doesn’t really count), etc are all gone. On the other hand, most budget EVs will give the performance cars of yesterday year a good run for their money.
only SUVs for you now
They probably don’t make it anymore but I just saw some oddball Mitsubishi sedan at a buy-here-pay-here lot down the street. I’m not even sure what the hell it was as I’ve never seen another. It was styled like the early 2000s Kia Rio before Hyundai/Kia upped their game.
I think the Eclipse GSX/GST was cool but their build quality was dogshit and that’s why you don’t see them on the road anymore. My wife had a GS and it blew up at 120k miles. Meanwhile my Camry is at 230k miles on just oil changes alone.
maybe the sedan mirage? looked vaguely like the old lancer.
I think you might be right based on the photos I see.
Holden and Ford Australia. Partly for personal nostalgic reasons but also because of local engineering and manufacturing. A bit of our national identity disappeared when they shut down, although they were owned by US companies they were still a source of Aussie pride. Nowadays we have no local industry and it all just feels a bit hollow. Like watching sports when you have no local team.
I doubt they’d be able to make them these days but seeing as we’re talking hypotheticals, there’s something about a big cube V8 or turbo 6 that’s missing from everything since. Yes I know on here the hive mind demands we boo ands hiss if someone dares to like anything ICE, and when our current runabout goes it’ll likely be replaced by an EV of some sort. But for us, cars are a hobby and a source of enjoyment too, and I dare say we’ll have at least one ICE vehicle for a long as it’s feasible for us to do so. And if I can get a semi-modern nod to the past that would be perfect.
And if the Japanese car industry could go back to the 90s I’d be pretty stoked about that too!
100% this.
Another thing that disappeared with Holden and Ford Australia are normal sized utes, nowadays it’s just all gigantic pick-up trucks.
At least bring back the Barra! I must swap it into so many things.
Barra the world!
Studebaker so we can bring back the jet engine nose style.
The pedestrian poker. Still less worse than all the brodozers around now.
Auburn
I got to ride in this Auburn. Smooooth.
Delorean Motor Company.
I’d love to see a modern take on the classic Delorean. Something that isn’t a fugly ass cybertruck dorkmobile.
Wrangle out of the clutching, greedy hands of marketing departements the names “Abarth” and “Cooper”, then give them to actual performance workshops working on bettering affordable cars.
I’m honestly kind of surprised Ford hasn’t re-released the Mercury or rebranded some cars as Mercury brand.
They weren’t good cars, but they had songs and brand appeal. And who knows, maybe somebody would think well of them.
That was one of the last old people brands, especially with the vinyl top.
I know that consumers now mainly care about power and fuel economy but I would very much welcome Ford bringing Mercury back as their old people car subsidiary…as much as I doubt there is enough of a market for it.
My 98 Grand Marquis is my 5th car and it’s the comfiest daily I’ve owned (the others being a 1999 Civic SI, 2001 Cavalier, 1997 Tercel, and 2003 A4 in that order. I know they’re entirely different classes vs. a full sized sedan). Just give it an updated powertrain with better fuel economy and some QOL features (folding rear seat plz) and I’d drive one off the lot.
The death of the touring car, and even the sedan really sucks. We need more large 4 door cars that can fit four adults comfortably with reasonable trunk space. My first car was an old Chrysler LHS and it’s still the most comfortable car I ever drove.
Agreed.
Those old boats with big trunks would fulfill the needs of probably 90% of truck and SUV owners, it’s a shame we’ve moved away from the full sized sedan.
Oh well. As long as I can continue to source parts easily and cheaply I’ll keep this thing going until it dies, and at less than 170,000km, it’s got a lot of life left in it.
Does Ford even make cars anymore? I thought they ditched them with the Fusion and just build trucks/SUVs.
Edit: duh I forgot about the Mustang.
Yep, just the mustang. Trucks and SUVs make them more $$$.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the Fusion’s styling but it seemed like they had that platform mostly dialed in before they nuked it. It seemed to be pushing towards the luxury end of things in many ways.
They also killed the fiesta and focus RS which looked great and offered people who enjoy driving a fun, cheap option. I would’ve been fine with one or the other but they said nope fuck them both. They basically just sell fleet vehicles and mustangs now.
tram.This is the way
I asked a manufacturer how long it would take them to design and build one of my favorite cars and they said 6 months. I was surprised and asked, “Dat soon”. (Old Datsun joke)
I wish Ford had more regular cars in North America, they got rid of all except the Mustang
Bring back the crown Victoria!
they still make trucks, but their “regular” where one of a kind with it’s variomatic
