My Modern Rambler

Well, I would suspect the folks at Volvo would be slightly aghast that I likened their new C-30 to a 1959 Rambler American 2-door wagon. Popular car magazines certainly don't see it that way. But that's why I bought the C-30, a tough little devil that's the zeitgeist of modern transportation in 2009!

What are we facing today? An unpredictable economy on Prozac without a prescription and volatile fuel prices that can spike sooner than a cat's fur on Halloween. The same pragmatic response to a recession in the late 1950's that lead to the sales success (By the '60s the Rambler was the third best selling make) of the American wagon against such dinosauric monstrosities as the '59 Cadillac, spurred my purchase of the C-30 this year.

While the C-30 drives circles around the Rambler, it is cut from the same parsimonious cloth. The C-30 is a maneuverable, gas stingy (30mpg highway), 4-seater hatchback ('50s lingo for "small wagon") that is economical to buy and maintain much like the aforementioned 1959 American.

Yet, you won't be punished for frugality. A "music-to-the-ears" sound system, extremely comfortable seating and a turbo-powered 5-cylinder make the C-30 more than a a mediocre econobox. It's a celebration of practicality without that withered cheapness so common to "small cars".

Let's be real. You won't pull up to your 30th high school reunion and necessarily impress those who are sporting a Mercedes or Cadillac. But haven't you matured enough to care less what they think? Besides, the handsome football jock has never held any job longer than 24 months and the Homecoming Queen, well, let's be polite, is about 80 lbs. heaver than when you last saw her.

I would like to think that we are embracing the cataclysmic shift to prudence this new financial world is becoming. Buying a C-30 is part of that. It may not agree with everyone, and I can understand that, but for those of us who get it, the Volvo is precisely what it needs to be: a contemporary Rambler American.