It was basically a lawnmower with a car body (sort of) instead of mower blades, powered by a two-cycle engine, capable of reaching speeds up to 50 mph downhill and with a running start 40 mph uphill. Fueling stops were always entertaining. Back then, attendants still pumped gas, cleaned windshields, checked tire pressure and the oil. (There were also “gas wars” when the price of gas might get down to as low as 19¢ a gallon and you could get drinking glasses or dinnerware as premiums.) Often when I would pull up to a gas pump, the attendant would come out to find me pouring a bottle of 2-cycle oil into the gas tank (left-rear fender) and he would freak out and it would take me several minutes to assure him that I knew what I was doing, that the oil needed to be mixed with the gas, just like in a lawnmower. A few refused to pump the gas for fear of liability.
The other humorous, and sometimes dangerous, feature of the car was the design of the doors, which opened not from the rear out (as now with all cars) but from the front out, so that if you were going 30 mph or more (though you couldn’t go too much more) and opened the driver’s or passenger’s door, it might swing out from the force of the airstream, ripping an arm off in the process. Humorous for all.
My understanding (true or not I don’t know) was that my car was one of only three Saabs in the US at that time, as they were not being imported yet and had only gotten here from owners who bought them in Sweden, bringing them here by ship. Maybe so. But my car was certainly the only Saab in Wichita in 1967. But I was only 18 and stupid and traded the Saab for an Austin-Healey Sprite, just because it was cooler, a sports car, and could go 80 mph. But in only a few months I had had two accidents with the Sprite before finally blowing a piston. From then on I always pined for my 1959 Saab 92. And the Albino Watermelon still pops up from time to time in my dreams.
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