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Vonnegut on Swedish Engineering

mtmogs

New member
Okay, so it's not about snowcats but seeing as several of us have Swedish-made snowcats, thought you might get a kick out of this story by author Kurt Vonnegut who passed away this week. Kind of reminds me of a Lyndon-told story.
Have I Got a Car for You!
By Kurt Vonnegut

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 came 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.​
 

Melensdad

Jerk in a Hawaiian Shirt & SNOWCAT Moderator
Staff member
GOLD Site Supporter
Well despite Vonnegut's assessment of Swedish Engineering, I will stand by my Swedish Snow Trac as one of the best designed snowcat ever made. Simple enough for me to maintain/operate. Economical to operate and own. Practical design that can be had in any of numerous variants from a fully enclosed cabin, a short cabin with cargo area behind, or to a fully open cabin. The steering is absolute genius, and the only system I know that doesn't chew up horsepower to turn the snowcat.

Now all that said, Vonnegut was a genius and a funny, if not cranky, man. He came from my home state and never had anything good to say about that either! Like I said, genius.
 

mtmogs

New member
Bob,

Never having owned an old Saab, my Snow Trac is the only piece of Swedish transportation I am personally familiar with. Well that's not completely true, I've flown on Saab commuter jets before.

I was on the fence for about 10 years regarding purchase of a snowcat of some sort. It wasn't until I learned about the Snow Trac, and in particular the variator mechanism, that I actually got excited enough to buy one. That plus the fact that I haven't yet crashed on a Swedish made jet leads me to disagree with KV on Swedish engineering.

Indiana? Well I'll leave that one to the experts. Say what you want about IN, but they have great limestone. I see it everywhere. Damn beautiful building stone.

-Paul
 
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