Why always Saab?
01/15/2022
You may have noticed the film "Drive My Car" recently, which has been widely covered in the local press after winning a number of awards at the Cannes Film Festival in July 2021 and now also picking up a Golden Globe Award (for Best Foreign Language Film).
The Japanese feature film by Ryūsuke Hamaguchi can probably be described as a mixture of road movie and relationship drama, but that's beside the point here. The secret star of the film is a red Saab 900 Aero, in which the main character Hidetoshi Nishijima is driven around by Tōko Miura. Why a Saab anyway?
Couldn't it have been a Nissan or a Toyota, maybe even a Buick or an Audi?
But the red Saab in the Japanese movie is no exception. Saab cars are and have always been popular in films. Want some examples? In the action movie "Tenet", a Saab 9-5 is placed on the roof. In the movie "Kodachrome" (from 2017), a photographer drives halfway across the United States to find the last store that can still develop his Kodachrome slide films. Woody Allen used a Saab 900 Cabriolet in "Scenes from a Mall" (1991) and also used a Saab as a movie car in "Mighty Aphrodite" (1995).
And the list could go on and on.
In the nineties, Saab had a pretty cult reputation in the States and anyone who was anyone in the cultural scene drove a Saab Cabriolet, it seems. But there must be another reason why the Japanese are now jumping on the bandwagon and the action film directors too.
Perhaps it's simply because Saab cars have always looked different from the rest. And since the brand hasn't been producing cars for a few years now, there's probably no need to knock on the door for rights and permission. But perhaps our readers know more?
