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Culture > November 24, 2004 > Web Only

Have I Got a Car for You!

By Kurt Vonnegut

(Kurt Vonnegut / vonnegut.com)

I used to be the owner and manager of an automobile dealership in West Barnstable, Massachusetts, called “Saab Cape Cod.” It and I went out of business 33 years ago. The Saab then as now was a Swedish car, and I now believe my failure as a dealer so long ago explains what would otherwise remain a deep mystery: Why the Swedes have never given me a Nobel Prize for Literature. Old Norwegian proverb: “Swedes have short dicks but long memories.”

Listen: The Saab back then had only one model, a bug like a VW, a two-door sedan, but with the engine in front. It had suicide doors opening into the slipstream. Unlike all other cars, but like your lawnmower and your outboard, it had a two-stroke rather than a four-stroke engine. So every time you filled your tank with gas you had to pour in a can of oil as well. For whatever reason, straight women did not want to do this.

The chief selling point was that a Saab could drag a VW at a stoplight. But if you or your significant other had failed to add oil to the last tank of gas, you and the car would then become fireworks. It also had front-wheel drive, of some help on slippery pavements or when accelerating into curves. There was this selling point as well: As one prospective customer said to me, “They make the best watches. Why wouldn’t they make the best cars, too?” I was bound to agree.

The Saab back then was a far cry from the sleek, powerful, four-stroke Yuppie uniform it is today. It was the wet dream, if you like, of engineers in an airplane factory who had never made a car before. “Wet dream,” did I say? Get a load of this: There was a ring on the dashboard, connected to a chain running over pulleys in the engine compartment. Pull on it, and at the far end it would raise a sort of window shade on a spring-loaded roller behind the front grill. That was to keep the engine warm while you went off somewhere. So, when you cam back, if you hadn’t stayed away too long, the engine would start right up again.

But if you stayed away too long, window shade or not, the oil would separate from the gas and sink like molasses to the bottom of the tank. So when you started up again, you would lay down a smokescreen like a destroyer in a naval engagement. And I actually blacked out the whole town of Woods Hole at high noon that way, having left a Saab on a parking lot there for about a week. I am told old timers there still wonder out loud about where all that smoke could have come from. I came to speak ill of Swedish engineering, and so diddled myself out of a Nobel Prize.

Kurt Vonnegut is a legendary author, WWII veteran, humanist, artist, smoker and In These Times senior editor. His classic works include Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, Cat's Cradle, among many others. His most recent book, A Man Without a Country, collects many of the articles written for this magazine.

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  • Reader Comments

    Kurt Vonnegut deserves about 50 Nobel Prizes for Literature. I’ve been a huge fan for years. Funny that he wrote this now; just about two weeks ago, out of the clear blue, I e-mailed the Nobel Prize organization for Literature and told them to give Vonnegut a Nobel Prize. I asked them why they hadn’t yet. I think I even used some bad words. I never heard back from them.

    Posted by Edgar Frog on Nov 24, 2004 at 11:15 AM

    There you go again, insulting the Swedes once more - short dicks indeed! Fatal mistake.

    Posted by peter brody on Nov 24, 2004 at 12:54 PM

    Although I enjoyed this piece...Kurt’s alot funnier and more biting when he’s PISSED OFF!

    LOL!

    God bless him.

    Posted by Liberal AND Proud on Nov 24, 2004 at 1:37 PM

    Wow.  While I’m generally impressed with Mr. Vonnegut’s writing, his grasp of European engineering is marginal at best.  I seem to recall that the East German monstrosity known as the Trabant was a sleek little 2 stroke (sarcasm intended).  Lest we think only fully fledged socialist countries think mixing oil and gasoline is a good thing (I think they actually had pumps that delivered the devil’s brew).  We can always look at the funny little company that became Audi DKW / AutoUnion.  The company history even talks about the wonders of the 600cc 2 stroke.

    He’s correct on the memory thing however.

    Posted by J. Bengtsson on Nov 24, 2004 at 1:39 PM

    I have returned to this site everyday since the election hoping to hear some kernel of wisdom from Mr. Vonnegut. From my perspective Mr. Vonnegut is one of the few people suitably equipped to comment on this situation as it seems a lot like something that he might have written.

    But this will do.

    Posted by Otto Response on Nov 24, 2004 at 2:02 PM

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