I remember when every liberal Northeast college professor worth his Cyprian latakia drove a Saab. The question is… why? Normally, I live by the Al Reisseian dictate that a brand must stand for one thing, and one thing only. It’s easy enough to identify the USP for most successful car brands. Mercedes = engineering. BWM = driving. Toyota = reliability. Lexus = comfort. Hyundai = cheap. But I can’t for the life of me remember what characteristic typified Saab. Practicality? Handling? No…. Quirky! Huh? WTH does “quirky” mean? Never mind that key between the seats thing. No wait, maybe that IS it. How much satisfaction did a Saab owner get from telling the valet parking attendant “Oh, the ignition’s between the seats.” Knowing (but not saying) that the key positioning was a safety-related “quirk.” Oh wait; college professors don’t use valet parking. But I reckon that somewhere in Saab customers’ collective subconscious they imagined they told a barely post-pubescent car parker where to fit the key. Yes, that’s some complicated shit right there. Which is why no one outside of Sweden could have possibly made the Saab brand a success. GM? Don’t make me laugh. Actually, do. I am genuinely sad to see Saab go. Only thing is, I went through the five stages of grief for Saab more than twenty years ago.
SAAB was to cars what Apple is to computers. Except no one at GM corporate ever understood Apple’s brilliant Think Different campaign. So how could they ever understand SAAB?
SAAB was for big thinkers who couldn’t possibly be seen driving anything so blatantly conformist as a Volvo or a BMW, who didn’t have the bombast or scratch for a Mercedes-Benz or a Cadillac, but who just knew that they were smarter – and somehow different – than anyone driving a Honda, a Toyota or some other Consumer Reports Best Buy.
SAAB was for people who fluently spoke two or more languages. For people who had traveled off of their home continent. For men with natural blonde hair, and for women with hazel eyes.
SAAB was the brand for people who had been burned one too many times by Volkswagen.
These buyers wanted something different. They wanted something better. And they expected GM to give it to them in SAAB.
However, GM has been phoning it in to SAAB for so long that there’s nothing left but a splendid emblem, an ignition key between the seats, and a bin full of obsolete parts marked Made in Michigan.
Sometimes there is nothing so sad as to see potential lost.
Requiescat In Pace SAAB. We hardly knew ye.
I haven’t listened to the podcast yet, but regarding SAAB’s special characteristic, I don’t think you can boil it down to just one. But, if you had to, it would be “practicality”.
Take the key between the seats. It wasn’t done that way just to be different. There was less chance of ripping open your knee on the ignition and your keychain during a crash. Also, it allowed the ignition to lock the transmission. There was a joke, “How do you know a SAAB is stolen?” Answer: “It’s being driven down the highway in reverse”.
Front wheel drive made sense in the Northeast’s snow and the hatchback offered more useable space than many SUVs. Turbochargers allowed the use of smaller, lighter engines. Everything on a SAAB was thought out and there for a reason. That’s what was lost over the last decade.
SAAB was for what? Compelete please.
Anyway compare 1947 Beetle to Model 92. 92 was ahead of its time, fresh thinking from outside the box. Interesting car.
Beetle evolved to 911. 92 genes are dead line now. Very sad.
Wallenbergs, hang your heads in shame.
I have owned 2 SAAB 900S cars in my life. They were both the best car I have ever owned. I have driven BMW, VW, Ford, Chevy, Pontiac. None come close to the reliability and comfort of the SAAB. I will be very sad to see it die. Thanks GM and hope you rot in hell as well.
I had 1968 Saab 95 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_95) for years. One of the odder looking cars. Very good car for driving and durableness. Very bad car for heat.
In northern Finland often temps reach -30/-40C. Saab 95 starts fine but interior temperature with heater at full go reaches maybe -10C, after a time condensation on windscreen freezes and interior becomes foggy, ice fog. Makes for uncomfortable driving, cold and blind.
Two crashes with reindeer, both car and animal drove/ran away after.
Robert, I think you are wrong, Saab will be saved through reorganisation, the Swedish government will not allow them to fail.
I apologize – I don’t have time to listen to and absorb the wisdom in the podcast right now but I am going to throw in my $0.02 on what Saab means…
Quirky can be a selling point. Maybe non-comformist? The cars were different enough. I remember they freewheeled, which appealed to people interested in efficient, thrifty cars. The V4 engines probably appealed to some. The early-80s Saab of a friend was curious in that it had windows with a cylindrical section with vertical axis… it was aa way of getting some additional aerodynamic effect, I think, without sacrificing head and shoulder room.
Certainly, there were a few automotive problems that Saab chose to solve in a non-comformist way.
By the time of the ’80s Saab that I actually rode in, they were quite nice. I remember being impressed with the qality of the materials and the finish of the car, the relative smoothness of the 4-banger and it had pretty decent get-up-and-go in spite of the lack of “Vee-eight Pow-ah!”
And, while it was very comfortable on the inside (I’m decently over 6′ and so was another friend, who was riding in the back), there wasn’t a wasteful amount of car wrapped around that comfortable passenger compartment and a decent-sized trunk.
It was a high-quality but “essential” car. It was all the car you needed and no more.
Volvos impressed me the same way but they addressed more of the automotive design questions more conventionally.
Here are words that come to mind for me for quintessential Saab:
Winter
Hatchback
Turbo
My 1989 900 Turbo had the crankshaft pulley facing the firewall, the transaxle was in front of the engine, with equal length axles. The clutch bell housing was so accessible that you could change the clutch in a couple of hours.
The car had great supportive seats, 185 horses, thick, solid doors, thick paint, and a very useful hatch, big enough to carry a washing machine.
The car had a good ride and soaked up the Brooklyn potholes. It was fast enough to keep up with any traffic situation in NYC, and I felt good about carrying my young son and wife in the back. The brakes were also very good. I sold it to a Dutch graduate student after putting 135k on it. It still had a great body and the interior held up. I did have to change the timing chain and inner drivers at 110k. My wife loved it.
I was no leftist professor, but rather a IT analyst. Most of the people who owned Saabs were not as well off as BMW drivers. Most of us weren’t trying to take every corner as fast as we could. We wanted a safe, stylish, roomy, practical car with decent performance, good seats, and which was somewhat fun to drive.
The whole branding thing is so stupid. People want to judge others or even themselves by the cars they drive. People use their own scorecard when they buy a car. Personally, I would never, ever, put my teenager in a ten year old Honda Civic. I consider that car a deathtrap. To each his own.
I think Saab died when GM bought it… before that the cars were ahead of their time.
In the US they probably were the only small upscale car. Everyone else who sold small cars sold crap-cars. If you needed a good car, you needed a large car. That’s how Saab was different (in the US). In Europe we never cared for Saab, there was enough choice in economical upscale hatchbacks.
It is sad to see your 20 year old dog die, but considering the dog had cancer for the last years, you are happy for him to finally find peace.
maybe Saab would have been bankrupt by now anyway, even without GM. they were too small of a company to survive. Perhaps a better partner would have helped. in the 1920s there maybe were 1000 car companies worldwide. Now only a few.
“The whole branding thing is so stupid. People want to judge others or even themselves by the cars they drive. People use their own scorecard when they buy a car.”
You nailed what I consider to be the greatest failure of many enthusiast communities.
There is no ‘right’ car. When folks ask me what car would be the best for them my first three words are, “I don’t know.” Followed by, “What do you like?”
The only time a ‘brand’ comes into play is when there’s snob appeal involved in the decision. Unfortunately most everyone in the world is a snob to varying degrees.
That’s why when I can, I walk. New Balance shoes baby!
I strongly suspect anyone who buys a car based on branding isn’t going to enjoy a SAAB — hence why they call it quirky. Or they crib Top Gear and say SAAB drivers are polite. Personally, I never noticed the key thing until I read it in a car review, but I did start off with a 9000 that didn’t have they key thing. Once I got the 900, the key thing never bothered me and I never though about it until I realized it was almost impossible to steal a SAAB. Rather like the funny window switches that you have to pull up to open — another practical innovation so you couldn’t crush your fingers by accident.
If you’ve ever been to Scandinavia, you get really sick of the girls. Like Lake Woebegone, they are all above average looking, are immensely practical, easy to drive, and moderately athletic. Some are blonde, some are brunette, but after a while you start wanting an Italian drama queen or a German ice princess. Or you just start to like the taste of herring and deal with it.
I like SAABs. Haven’t owned one tho. I totally get why college profs like em. They are different, politically correct, ecological, intellectual. And you can’t discount the appeal of Scandanavian design. What cars’ seats (other than Volvos’) are as comfortable?
Speaking of Volvo, Ford has been marginally more successful than GM was with SAAB, but just barely.
It’s no secret that they would like to off-load the “I roll” car. Perhaps a merged Volvo-SAAB, under Swedish management/ownership?
@Steven Lang:
Branding is about how you communicate to your customers, current and future. It’s about giving people an idea of what to expect. It’s not just enthusiasts who care about this. Millions of dollars shifts around the advertising industry to try to build brands.
You mentioned New Balance. It’s a great example. I must be on my tenth pair of 991/992s. They’re great shoes and very comfortable. I also happen to know that Steve Jobs wears them too. Does it hurt to be thought of as someone with similar taste to one of the great business leaders of all time? Of course not. Would I wear them if they hurt my feet? Hell no. If someone asks me for a recommendation for everyday athletic shoes, I can’t tell them what will feel right on their feet – but I’ll suggest they start by trying on the 992s.
When I was just at Wayne State there is this douchey dude driving around in an early 80s Saab with a huge “Liberal” bumper sticker on the back. He prolly thought that he was showing the world how sophisticated he was. Most people thought he loved the penis.
New Balance shoes baby!
A company with an interesting marketing philosophy. They’re the only major athletic shoe company that doesn’t use celebrity and athlete endorsements. The best fitting shoes I’ve ever had (well, next to my steel toed Hush Puppies).
My Dad’s last two cars were Saab 900s. An economist, he started one of OSHA’s departments. A salt water sea captain who astonished his ship crew by regularly pulling out a sextant to check the GPS. Has a formula named after him for calculating the costs and benefits of implementing a comprehensive safety and health program: The Bell formula. And of course, he smoked a pipe. Now his last Saab is mine along with the fine tires he let me talk him into buying. I had no idea he wouldn’t get to wear them down.
I have never owned a Saab. But I have a deep love for them. It comes from having a Swedish mother and a Swedish uncle who owned a series of them. Each summer, we’d spend a few weeks in Sweden and I have a very fond memory of riding with my uncle Eric in his two-stroke Saab though the curvy, wooded roads north of Stockholm. We came around a bend and the road flattened out and got much wider. “This is a runway for the air force. There are Drakens nearby”. To a ten-year-old airplane-crazed boy this was the stuff of magic. It made me very proud of what Scandinavians could accomplish. Here was this little country of only six million that could produce both a really fun car and a supersonic fighter plane. My Mom’s country.
My dad (a Dane) briefly considered a Saab when the V4 came out in 1968, but the price was too high. He did have two Volvos (company cars) in 1964 and 1965 (the ’64 met an early end giving its life to protect my parents and their two Swedish guests one tipsy night after a company party at the ’64 World’s Fair) but aside from that he drove Buicks, Plymouths and VW beetles.
For me Saab was about that fierce Scandinavian independence. No, not everyone likes herring and that amazingly awful-sounding dish made with anchovies, heavy cream, potatoes and onions (Jannson’s Temptation) that’s actually heavenly, but those of us who have it in our blood (and those who don’t but who recognize the method in the madness) will miss the Saab that was and hope for the Saab that might be: a car that isn’t so cookie-cutter bland that it bores one to tears.
Going off of what you guys talked about in the first two minutes of the podcast:
Not to be too much of a kiss-ass, but I think the site has been on fire ever since RF wrote that “The Corvette Must Die” editorial.
I got to read four car reviews this week, saw the return of regular podcasting, got to read four well written editorials, went over a lot of entertaining news items, and was introduced to new live-blogging.
Keep up the good work, I’m enjoying the site now as much as I ever have.
I am not so sure Saab will die. It is possible that the Swedes are smart and merely accelerating the push to separate Saab from GM – hence no money (so far) until GM begs off on its ownership.
GM is caught in a trap. It must continue to pay suppliers of Saab else it risks a “run on the bank” worldwide from its supply chain to other GM divisions fearful of partial collapses with non-payment for parts previously supplied.
At the same time, without the Swedes advancing loans, GM cannot continue to support this entity much longer. So once suppliers have been paid, the Swedes will ask for the keys back (along with certain supply/service agreements from GM at favorable terms) and invest in the company to make a go of it.
Just a theory on my part. And I don’t necessarily believe that a small manufacturer can’t survive – history shows that people will pay a premium price for things of superlative value. Now Saab just needs to make that happen. With GM in control, that would never occur.
In the early 1970s I was in the market for a two-seater. Several new designs had been introduced–the 240Z, Porsche 914, and the Saab Sonnett 3. Talk about “think different”! Fiberglass body, V4 engine, and FWD. Stunning in bright yellow, the design hasn’t held up quite as well as some of its contemporaries. However, from time to time I’m still sad I didn’t buy one. Would’ve been just me, a tall blonde Swede model, and my Sonnett.
Who knows what the hell Saab will do. Right now there are a number of FWD or AWD turbo hatchbacks that do what Saab is supposed to do, except cheaper and better. The GTI, the WRX, the Speed3, the HHR SS (joking. . . maybe?).
The 900 was a really great car, but it would be very difficult to justify a FWD car with a longitudinal engine and an interior that good. I would most likely end up costing as much as a 335i, and then what’s the point? Hell, the G35 has really great seats. And Japanese quality.
Saab would have been gone years ago had GM not wholly purchased the company.
Why GM bought them I can only guess. It was the wrong move and wasted precious resources just as Ford squandered their riches on European automakers as well.
Saab’s time has come and gone. I expect the company to die within a few years if not sooner. RIP.
Being a Subaru driver, I’m going to give my .02 about them. I think internationally Subaru’s brand was intertwined with their rally heritage. The performance and handling were good, and every car could claim to be rally bread.
Here in the states, rallying wasn’t popular, and we didn’t get cars like the WRX and STI until recently. Here they found their niche as being the only company to offer AWD on every car they sold. They became rally popular in places with tons of snow. I know the further northwest I go here in Michigan, the higher the percentage of Subarus. The Legacys where slightly bigger and more comfortable, while Imprezas more sporty. They weren’t main stream, but worked well in the niche they carved out.
The WRX started to get people excited about rallying, and Subarus performance in general. It really gace the brand some excitement. I’ve seen more WRXs than any other Subaru by a lot.
Recently they started to get into the mainstream market. In my opinion, a big mistake. They will not be able to compete with Honda and Toyota with mainstream cars. A guy that will want a Civic or Corolla, won’t buy a Impreza. I don’t think to many people cross shop Accords and Camrys with Legacys either. I think that decision will haunt them.
Speaking for myself, I know I would not consider any of their current offerings besides the Legacy GT and Spec B, and they will probably go the way of the rest of the brand when the new model arrives. The old cars offered something nobody else could. The only thing the new ones have is AWD, and that hurt when the high gas prices arrived. Subaru used to be OK with not making a car for everybody, but the perfect car for somebody. Trying to make cars for the everyman will lead to a failure.
Quirky = the satisfaction of DIFFERENT.
Saab is no longer different. Just expensive.
Because Saab came out of left field, they just never bothered with the rules, ending up breaking them in some quite spectacular ways. And that made them appeal to thinking people and artists.
The urSaab was the result of 16 aeronautical engineers being asked to build a car. They drew two aeroplane wings – a fat one and a sleeker one, and placed them on top of each other. It was the most aerodynamically efficient shape they knew, why shouldn’t it be used in a car?
Front wheel drive.
The aircraft heritage.
“The art and technique of driving,” by Carlsson, was translated into a heck of a lot of languages. Everyone wanted to learn how to do left-foot braking after seeing him trounce the field with his car number 283 in the Monte Carlo Rally.
When Carlsson in another rally rolled his Saab to escape a mud pool, and repeated the stunt to doubting journalists – Ford tried to do the same, and destroyed their car.
Those stories got around and built the brand.
99 Turbo. The first 900 convertible.
Lots of quirky but effective thinking when it came to passenger protection (most of it lobbied against by GM long before GM bought the company and destroyed it.)
===
Most car brands have similar stories to tell, of course. But Saab has such a lot of them. Here’s one that might be new to you, but which is true.
Surgeons drove Saabs, not Volvos. Why? The crumple zones in a Saab deflected the crash energy; while the stiff body of the Volvos accumulated it and sent it through the survival cage, often resulting in injured or liquified inner organs. The distribution of crash forces in a Saab (when they were the first to come up with this principle) ensured organ survival.
Something surgeons paid attention to. Surgeon’s families (their husbands and children and parents) also drove Saabs. Surgeons have college professor friends. :-)
The big carmakers considered Saab a nuisance because their attention to safety ended up adding costs to their own cars. At Saab, driver/passenger/pedestrian safety was where the thinking began.
Though I also suspect that they became popular because there were so few of them, while they weren’t a Porsche they still carried the cachet.
Saab’s reputation was at its Zenith in the late 80s/early 90s — and then was run into the ground at an accelerating rate by a marriage made in car hell.
Let’s hope that chicken with a party hat can resurrect like the bird Phoenix.
One little comment. In the US, it’s thought that Sweden is a Socialist country just a step away from Communism.
This would come as a great surprise to the country’s present government, which is Conservative, and which is catching a lot of criticism for its Saab stance from the opposition Social-Democratic party. (Giving fire to the claim that any nation or organization with “democratic” in its name isn’t.)
Sure, if you overlapped the political spectra of the US and Sweden, you’d not get a perfect match – but you would find Swedes as hard right as any American opposite, as you will find Americans as hard left as any of their Swedish opposites.
Sweden under prime minister Olof Palme took a very strong stance against the US presence in Vietnam, which is when Sweden was branded as Socialist. The most recent Social-Democratic prime minister, Göran Persson, yes – from Palme’s party, was as friendly, helpful and accommodating to Swedish industry and entrepreneurs as you could wish for.
Take a trip to Sweden, and consider the fact that the country is an entrepreneurial and industrial powerhouse (car industry right now, not so much), that it has a large and powerful nobility, that Stockholm and Göteborg/the south are centers of economic activity, and that several of the people on the world’s richest persons list are Swedes, and you might want to give the “Sweden is socialist” meme another think.
Saab is toast. Sadly. This had to happen no later than 3 years after GM first bought the brand. Now, all the good engineers are gone, there is no “real Saab” product and no one wants true GM’s let alone Swedish faux GM’s.
A slow fade into the sunset. I also think that JB is right in that someone will continue to pour good money after bad in trying to rescue Saab, in vain.
Never owned a Saab. The few people I know who do, are IT types, or athletic types. I don’t know what the Saab brand stood for – but I’m pretty sure it had little to do with college professors or leftist politics.
It’s easy enough to identify the USP for most successful car brands. Mercedes = engineering. BWM = driving. Toyota = reliability. Lexus = comfort. Hyundai = cheap.
Either Al Reis is wrong, or most of these brands never got down to their essence – at least in the US.
Mercedes = Engineering as the “talking point” excuse to buy a car almost entirely for snob appeal.
BMW = “Driving” as the talking point excuse for buying a car based on snob appeal.
Toyota = Reliability. Toyota achieves a USP.
Lexus = Snob Appeal. It’s not comfort that sells them. Lots of cars offer comfort. Lexus stands for one thing only – “The only reason in the world for buying this very expensive Toyota is to show that I have more money than you”. For those who actually understand Lexus, it’s a pure brand. Much more honest than Merc/BMW.
Hyundai = Cheap + decent reliability = good value for money.
Actually RF, the original SAAB enthusiasts either went through the five stages of grief when the two-stroke was eliminated or when the 96 went out of production.
Compared to the “ur-SAABs”, even the 99 was costume jewelry. By the time the 900 showed up, the faithful had already switched to Subaru.
Another hint – the faithful always refer to SAAB the acronym, not Saab the word. SAAB actually means something.
Someone on this board once mentioned Saab as the “practical mans Citroen”. Sometimes you don’t have to be better, just different. And Saab was the car for the people who wanted to differentiate themselves on an intellectual standpoint through their choice of car. Saab perfected that particular niche. Saab was never going to be a strong selling mainstream brand, but it could nevertheless have been profitable doing what it did best, carving out that niche. And the tragedy is that GM never understood what it was they had on their hand, they where never able of profiting from Saabs cachet in that aspect. GM:s failure of understanding that fundamental question is also symptomatic of every other brand in GM:s portfolio.
Saab could have been GM:s quirky, intellectual, greenwashed, avantgarde brand, always in the forefront of evolution. Saab could have been a testbed for every major technological breakthrough at GM. Saab could have done the Volt. It could have continued selling in the low hundreds of thousands a year, the numbers hadn’t mattered. The point is, it would have been different from the rest, spearheading the competition, a quirky halo brand, showing the way for the rest of GM. And now it’s over…
@Ingvar
Saab could have been GM:s quirky, intellectual, greenwashed, avantgarde brand, always in the forefront of evolution. Saab could have been a testbed for every major technological breakthrough at GM. Saab could have done the Volt. It could have continued selling in the low hundreds of thousands a year, the numbers hadn’t mattered. The point is, it would have been different from the rest, spearheading the competition, a quirky halo brand, showing the way for the rest of GM.
Yes, if they’d been sensible, and had a strategy. This is what Saab could have been.
But GM wanted the innovations for Cadillac (with the SUV, the Saab engineers wanted the Sigma platform, but were given the old Trailblazer underpinnings, see what you can do with this…)
Saab ended up as an Opel/Vauxhall parts pilferer.
What could have been!
Nudave’s comment really struck a chord. When writing my post I actually debated whether to write Saab or SAAB and chose the former because of American convention. Perhaps that’s a metaphor for what happened to SAAB, the Svensk Aeroplan Aktiebolaget (translated as Swedish Airplane Incorporated). I will never forget the airplane logo on the steering wheel of my uncles type 94.
Actually there is a much simpler explanation for SAAB’s demographics: The Pipe Smoke Brown interior never needs cleaning.
Never understood SAABs. Back in the putt-putt 3 cylinder 2 stroke days, the Northeast was full of ’em, trailing blue smoke. 1960. Our English Ford Anglia would cruise at the 80mph limit on the Maine Turnpike, and no SAAB could keep up. The V4 Ford engined 96 that followed.. yawn. Weird engine.
The 99 came out with a Triumph engine in the early 70s. Boss had one. Yawn. Well, let me restate that — nicer than a Volvo 144, that plodding replacement for real Volvos.
The 9000 was nice to drive, nice turbo rush, but flaccid front suspension. The competing Audi 5000 turbo front wheel drive with five speed manual ate the 9000 alive (helluva screech grabbing 2nd at full bore!) and felt way more solid for the same bread. I wonder if either were actually reliable.
A friend’s 900 turbo was way slow compared to my new Talon AWD at the time, but did actually have a back seat. Both were hatches. I actually looked under the hood to see if there actually was a turbo there.
The 9-5. Have two acquaintances with them. Better suspension than my Legacy GT. That’s it.
Never understood SAAB. So as a car nut, I figure most other car nuts never got it either. As for the General, people predicted death for SAAB back in 1990 once the cold dead hand of GM took them over. Just took longer than expected.
In years past, SAAB seemed like the sort of vehicle Toytoa might build if they let the engineering department dictate everything, all other considerations (cost, marketing, etc.) be damned. The type of vehicle that engineers would buy when all they were concerned about was getting from point A to point B with the least amount of drama (be it safety, reliability, etc.).
A case in point is the ignition switch between the seats thing. Although it sounds logical due to the transmission lock/safety aspect, Toyota would never do it because it would increase the cost and most buyers wouldn’t like it since it’s so unconventional after a century of the ignition switch being on the dash in nearly all other vehicles.
My brother still has a crescent shaped scar on his knee from 40 years back as a result of said knee meeting the key in the dash. He was in the middle seat. I knew right away what the key location was for in my 99S. The seats were my favorites, probably of all the cars I’ve had. The hatch and trunk were tremendously practical. The body was designed to not trap winter salt and water and it came from the factory pretty well rustproofed. The dealer was, well, quirky – Wigwam SAAB, wigwam because they started in business selling Indian motorcycles. OTOH I certainly don’t miss the 9000CD I bought years later….
I did know a college professor who owned one – I sold him the 99S. An engineering professor, not terribly tweedy, same as could be said of the SAAB owning engineers like me. Thoughtfully designed practical safe cars and economical as long as you didn’t spin the turbo up too often.
Brian E :
A really good answer. But you missed the tongue and cheek, the irony, and perhaps my own implicit acknowledgment of branding.
Either that or I seriously need more writing lessons.
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“Everyone’s a little snobby. Really. Even frugal folks like me are snobby about their frugality. That’s why I always shop at Last Chance Thrift Store. It’s a great place to buy tires and exercise equipment.”
My guess is that a huge percentage of the faculty identify with Swedish socialism.
Thererfore, many, many Volvos and Saabs on campuses.