A frequently asked question and all kinds of answers
When I was still testing new cars, I was asked this very often: "Which car would you recommend to me today?" Of course, the counter-question immediately followed: "What do you want and what do you need?"
Another counter-question was the price, of course. However, if the answers given sounded reasonable, the answer was usually the same: "If you know a garage that you trust, that's near you and that has roughly what you're looking for in its range, go to them first. Because the triangular relationship between you, your car and the specialist who takes care of your car's maintenance might be a little easier if you trust the specialist!" I always thought this was a reasonably intelligent answer to a question that I could never answer anyway.
Well, in the glut of increasingly uniform SUVs, the following statement may no longer be entirely true, but I always wanted to point out that there is probably a reason why manufacturers have long since abandoned a one-model policy. Because everyone wants something different and buying a car is rarely a matter of reason. And yes, Fordism is long gone - "any color as long as it's black". Thanks to sophisticated production methods, it is now almost impossible to find a car that is exactly the same as another, even among the plethora of modular construction kit cars. This would be the exemplary implementation of the philosophy of "flexible mass production" coined by Alfred P. Sloan, Director of General Motors from 1923 to 1937 - known in marketing jargon as "Sloanism".
Alfred P. Sloan, GM director from 1923 to 1937, manufactured - as best he could - the right car for everyone
But what makes me think that? Yes, right, Sloan, GM and things like that... There's also another question about cars: the one of my choice if I could pick another classic. The answer here is a sedan-bodied Buick between 1942 and 1948 with a manual transmission. I like early automatics because of my technical curiosity, remember my blog on the Clunck-O-Matic, but the Dynaflow is actually too boring for me. I hope I'm not offending anyone with this.
Yes, a Sedanet - or is it Sedanette, I'm afraid there's another chasm between those who write it that way and the others, please clarify! - Well, I'd go weak at the knees. A car like that is very, very high on my wish list.
I know it wasn't a technical revolution, but visually, in my humble opinion, it's a concentrated expression of almost everything I like about cars from the 1940s: the streamline, the fastback, the chrome radiator grille, the covered rear wheels, the split windshield and so on. And the car of my dreams would naturally have to have an in-line eight-cylinder engine. That gives it a certain aristocratic touch, V8 is good, straight-eight just sounds better, pronounced quickly as well as from the exhaust tailpipe. No, please save your sales offers, first you want to get various stationary vehicles running again before more of them come into the house! Yes, that's right, a friend's Buick Sedanet pictured - now sold - had a Dynaflow gearbox, which saved me from a big dilemma!
