Rainy Day in Portland - what a surprise!

We got dropped off somewhere on Hawthorne and walked down to Burnside. Lovely walk in the soft rain, reminded me of being at home in Ireland. But the surprise of the day was all the older classic European and Japanese cars sitting in drive ways and parked on side streets.

Here's a small sampling: Ford Fiesta MK 1, Peugeot 505 S, EVO IX (VIII?), VW Bus, Datsun (1500)Sports, Volvo 144, VW Karmann Ghia (two examples) and an Audi Quattro (love the plate).

Subarus are the New Volvos

 

Yes, this Subaru is actually stuck in place, look at all the tow bar scrapes on the ground

Right, I've had this theory for quite a while now, with no way to prove it...until I spent almost three weeks in Portland, Oregon.

See, there is a certain type of person, and for the past decade or more they've been inclined to drive older Volvo sedans and Wagons (especially the wagons, and especially the 200 series).

These people see themselves as outdoorsy, even if that is only driving to the mall, they dress up in L.L. Bean and North Face gear. The men like their hair unkempt and a little bit of facial hair, depending on their occupation. The women are similar with longer unkempt hair and less facial hair. They always look like they are either going for or returning from a hike. And the Volvo wagon is the car they use to drive to the hypothetical trail head.

They aren't what you would call "car people," they don't get a stiffy when Porsche announce the latest update to a 911 GT3 RS, but for some mysterious reason they are deeply loyal to their Volvos. And this is precisely the reason a lot of them are wandering over to the used Subaru market.

Their old Volvos were built in Sweden by Volvo, but then the Big Yankee American Uncle from Detroit bought them and decided to show the boys at Volvo how to make Swedish meatballs. When you've been flipping cheeseburgers for near a hundred years it doesn't really qualify you for the meatball game. Ford didn't think they would care, but these non-car people noticed. They no longer saw Volvos, but Ford Taurus' and Contours in drag where their boxy beauties used to be.

The bourgeois among this "class" can afford new Subarus and Subaru's PR and marketing team have done a great job telling them about all-wheel drive and the go anywhere attitude of their Outback wagon, ready to take on the malls and parking lots at a moments notice. But most of this class of people will be looking at older Subarus, no where near as old as their beloved Volvos. But as the Volvos get long in the tooth, scarcer and start to feel like very old cars, they look around the used car market, specifically they look for big dependable wagons and they see, glaring at them obviously, the Subaru Impreza and Legacy Outback wagons. And like some kind of Jungian car theory shift, they've all jumped ship, whether they're in the Midwest or the Pacific Northwest. Just like they all know to wear fleece jackets 365 days of the year: they all know Subaru is the new Volvo.

So, walking around Portland, in the rain, which is like saying, walking on earth breathing air, I got to see these people in their natural state. Some of them were holding on to their decaying Volvos, their babies duct taped into their car seats, others had made the move over to the Japanese Volvo, giving their off spring a better chance of survival in the more modern car with all wheel drive and airbags.

Cruising along the streets on foot I came across a used Mecca of Volvos. They had about twenty or thirty wagons and sedans, I'd say the had the whole 200 range covered from 1974 to 1993 when production ended. Some of them looking like they'd just arrived from 1985. Confirming the supply and demand theory I never listened to in my economic lectures.

So there is still hope for the Scandinavian loyalists, but eventually they'll have to face reality and move to Subaru, unless they are willing to choke down the Ford-parts-bin-Frankenstein that Volvos became post 1999.

Same people, two different cars and never the twain shall meet, whatever that means.