I’d bring back Reliant to make an electric version of the three wheel Robin purely for meme purposes.
I got a lift in a Reliant Robin once, and going round corners was terrifying.
Did you keep an eye out for Mr Bean?
Fancy a pick-up truck? I saw this abomination / Chad-Wagon a few years ago:
Isnt this the one that flips over if you look at it too fast? I also pick this one
Only if you weight it wrong on purpose like they did on Top Gear…
Austin, always had a soft spot for them & my grandmother learnt to drive in one.
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 put anyways. But they made good cars as well.
The Swedish Volvo died the day Ford took over, Geely is just there to trot around the remains.
Although, let’s be honest - Volvo had been on the verge of bankruptcy like three times before Ford bought them so it’s likely they would’ve died on their own too. Turns out making cars that are incredibly reliable is not a sustainable business model.
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 still want one, even though they’ve all been driven ti hell and back.
They were designed to do that on the regular. Especially Volvo’s polar editions were built to withstand just about any condition and kept simple and barebones for that reason.
Yeah, but even the most durable cars wear out eventually. And most of them were probably not taken care of super well, especially by like the third or fourth owner…
In Chinese Volvo’s defense they have built an entire manufacturing plant in South Carolina to build nothing but EVs, but the whole place is stuck in second gear.
SAAB, great looking cars with futuristic features!
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SAAB is dead?? Damn
SAAB Automotive got killed by GM, resurrected by Spyker, subsequently killed again by debtors, resurrected again by Chinese investors who lost the rights to the brand, turned into NEVS (National Electric Vehicles Sweden), ran out of money again due to COVID, and has since been in “hibernation”/limbo. Most recently Stenhaga bought the remainder of the factory in Trollhättan, and EV Electra were considering to buy what’s left of the production models. That deal fell through and, last I heard of it, whatever is left of the NEVS were like 20 folks who got fired in 2024.
So yeah, to quote McCoy “He’s dead Jim”.
And they were build super well.
SAAB, the car you buy, because, um… …?
They would just last forever
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 feel like the answer is different if I am just resurrecting them as they were when they died, vs if I am magically in charge of the brand with funding to start “fresh”…
Someone already said SAAB so Mitsubishi
RIP Lancer Evo
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? it looked vaguely like the old lancer and had the unmistakable 2000s nugget look.
I think you might be right based on the photos I see.
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.
International Harvester.
My dad had a Scout before I was born. I knew a guy with an international pickup truck that was indestructible.
I know the scout is coming back as an EV. But it seems to be a VW offshoot. So not really excited about that.
Pontiac
My first car. I still want to try out a G8 sometime.
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
Tucker! They never really got their footing but had some really innovative features that took decades for the industry to fully adopt. I’d be interested to see what they would be producing if they were around today.
I feel like amc was pretty innovative for its time. Most brands I can think of would probably succumb to the blob crossover trend because of how the us markets are set up for cars, but I feel like amc could still put an interesting twist on things.
Ugly but dependable.
tram.
This is the way
De Tomaso
DAF
they still make trucks, but their “regular” where one of a kind with it’s variomatic
and they used to race them in reverse just for shits and giggles!
You could bring any make and model to those races, but DAF was most popular just because they would go just as fast in reverse as in forward
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!
+1 for Holden - the true Aussie car brand. Such a shame that it has been owned by GM for longer than I’ve been alive, and they killed it when it wasn’t profitable enough. Fuck the USA.
Well said!
