A Saturn Vue, 1st gen, pre 2006 facelift. The body is clean for a 20 year old car, but that’s easy to do with plastic body panels.
The Saturn Vue was sold in 2 generations for the 2002 to 2010 model years. Gen 1 was 2002-2007, and Gen 2 2008-2010.
Saturn was around for 25 years. Established in 1985 as a subsidiary of General Motors, they and GM were hit hard by the 2008 financial crisis. GM filed Chapter 11 in 2009, and by 2010 Saturn was defunct. GM retained Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC, and Buick, and besides Saturn, the other GM brands to go defunct were Pontiac, Saab, Oldsmobile, and Hummer.
GM’s bankruptcy was one of the largest corporate Chapter 11 bankruptcies in US history. It was the 4th largest, behind Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual (both in 2008), and WorldCom (or MCI, in 2006).
I forgot to post yesterday – a 1980s Ford Thunderbird Turbo Coupe. It’s hard to believe those are like 35 years old now. The one I saw was in pretty good shape for its age.
Not the actual car I saw, but it had a similar black with red accents color scheme.
A 1st-gen BMW X5; 1999-2006 model years. This one is a 2001 parked next to my Outback. It belongs to a friend who takes good care of it. We were talking about it and his doesn’t have a lot of miles; 100K if memory serves. I was disappointed that my 2014 Grand Cherokee did not last the 20-30 years I wanted it to (mine had the diesel engine). I wanted my Jeep to last for 500+ K miles, but alas it was not meant to be.
It came with a 3.0L V6 from Italian maker VM Motori. Many run very well for a long time, but a substantial few of us had problems. Mine, after 10 years and 200,000 miles, overheated, blew a head gasket, and bent a conn rod.
Interestingly, there now is a 5 door version (haven’t seen that in the wild) … and the new ones (Jimny) are very expensive compared to the Samurai, which was a classical “youth/entry level” car/truck in S-America in the 90ies/00ies.
Yeah, I mean if I saw that car on the street I would just think “Oh, a classic Porsche.” Which is still interesting, but if would have had no idea it was a particularly rare/special version. Visually, the only difference I see is the very subtle “L” badge.
The L was only manufactured one year, only 1968, and only 449 were made. The L meant Luxury, although some sites say it meant Late Model but from my reading that is not correct.
most likely Luxus / Luxury then … i venture the guess that Porsche in 68 was still very domestic-german and find it hard to fathom them naming a model “Late” …
Today on the highway I came up on and passed a classic, Datsun 280ZX. I recognized it right away as I came up on it, but as I was looking at its back end I thought, wow that’s an old looking car. That was before I even got to see its rear ¾ view — this was just from the view of its rear and.
Yeah, an old car, the Datsun 280ZX. And this one was a clean, well running example.
I find most cars with regular sized windows now screem “old car” … compared to today’s cars, they have too tall windows … - too much optical weight above the waistline
quite notorious in otherwise good looking “youngtimers”
There’s a car show here today as well. They’re advertising “5 generations of batmobiles”, which appears to be a touring thing. I’m sure I could find out, but I’m curious if these are original props or replicas.
