Synonym: General Motors

“Saab could have been the Swedish Audi if it had been taken on in the right way 20 years ago. It’s been completely mismanaged, underinvested in by people who don’t understand what the brand means, and what it has the potential to mean.”

Tim Urquhart

Ostalgie V

Let’s end this series at five with another 2101 that is missing a luggage rack but makes up for it by being smooooooooooooth.

らめんおいしい

My favorite food is in the New York Times.

What I wouldn’t give for a frosty Kirin and a bowl of Oyaji’s best on a night like this.

Bridge Houses

While taking a break from this bolt I’ve been modeling in 3D all afternoon, I found this article on inhabited bridges over at Weburbanist.

This may prove useful in my 1B studio project, which requires the design of a prefabricated dwelling nestled somewhere on an island beneath the CPR rail bridge crossing the Grand River in Cambridge. We have to deal with the risk of +/- 5m of flooding, which is to say that houses on this site will have something in common with post-Katrina construction in New Orleans. Most people will probably end up with tall houses. Some folks are being clever and making floating houses, and Victor is being very clever (albeit a huge trespasser) and building in the bridge trusses.

I am half-tempted to join him. I am also half-tempted to throw cleverness out the window and go straight for audacity. Submarine house?

Ostalgie IV

After that DS, how about a ratted-out 2101 to bring back some Soviet grit? The grit, obviously, is deliberate and cultivated, but I think it’s great anyway. Not on a level with exposed structural members in architecture so much as with Cor-ten steel or maybe with some of Tom Kundig’s excellent work.

The Goddess Is Not Ostalgic At All

Not a Soviet box- in fact the Citroen DS may be its antithesis. It’s French, it’s curvaceous, and it was a very advanced piece of machinery at the time of its introduction in the late fifties.

As well, where the Soviet cars were mechanically simple and utilitarian, the DS spoke of sophistication. As Roland Barthes put it the automobile was the modern equivalent of the cathedral and the DS is a great example of this: from the time of its introduction it has been thought of as more than the sum of its parts, an object of fetishistic yearning. The AvtoVAZ and Ladas I’m posting this week- while desirable at the time because few other cars were available to citizens of communist countries- have only really become desirable with a postmodern re-imagining of them.

So, at any rate, I was talking about some kind of fantasy world in my last post and here it is. My fancy neighbours, off to listen to see an Edith Piaf show or something. Small cars and the luxury of style, not of opulence.

The car’s name is interesting in that when pronounced in French, DS sounds like déesse, or “goddess.” There was a version of the car called the DS Pallas- as in Pallas Athene. The goddess of practical wisdom, of cunning, cleverness, and victory would probably have approved.

Ostalgie III

I can’t get enough of these things. It’s ironic in that, during the Cold War, a lot of Russians probably wished they had access to cars from my side of the Iron Curtain.

I have to say that I love these cars in a completely unironic way. I wish there was a world populated by cars like this and Citroen DSes and Alfa Romeo Giulias and all kinds of other small, old and smartly styled European cars. Nobody drinks shitty bargain beer, nobody shouts in the street except to say hello and everybody does long lunches on terrace cafes.

Ostalgie II

A very snazzy VAZ 2101. Clean lines and an idyllic charm. It looks like it should star in a Wes Anderson movie.

Ostalgie

Not sure what it is. A Fiat 124 derivative built by one of the Soviet carmakers? Either way it looks supercool with some whitewalls, glossy paint and a luggage rack. I’d love to put on a fur hat and roll up at Toronto’s PRAVDA vodka bar in one of these.

Monaco in the Fifties

Those were the days. Standing right next to the track… leaning on a hay bale… the risk of getting hit in the face by Formula 1 cars… awesome.