Pick Which Of These Cars You’d Drive Home In: Winter Olympics Edition

I’m told the Winter Olympics are currently happening, which I guess explains why my local curling supply store has been so damn busy lately. And they’re sold out of brooms. Where the hell else do people buy brooms? Anyway, since it’s Olympic time again, it’s a good excuse to play one of my favorite old photograph-based car games, The Parking Lot Game. Essentially, all that means is I’m going to show you a parking lot, and you tell me which car you’re choosing from that lot. Sound good?

This time, we’ll be using a very Winter Olympics kind of picture. In fact, it’s an official Winter Olympics picture, from the 1980 Olympics that were held in Lake Placid, New York. That was the Olympics where the famous “Miracle on Ice” occurred, when the American hockey team eked out a narrow, hard-fought victory over the then dominant team from our old departed rivals, the Soviet Union.

I bet you’ve seen this before, but I’ll show it again, as it’s a pretty dramatic moment:

As you can imagine, that upset earned the US Hockey Team a near-constant presence on Wheaties boxes for years to come.

But let’s get back to a random parking lot photograph from 1980 Lake Placid, this one of the parking lot of the Lake Placid Club, as seen on the Greater Adirondack Ghost and Tour Company’s Facebook page:

I guess this parking lot isn’t so random: the buildings were used as the headquarters of the Olympics while there. The Greater Adirondack Ghost & Tour company has some interesting ghost-related notes about the club, which was, interestingly, founded in 1895 by Melville Dewey, the guy who told us where to stick our books on library shelves. Here’s the spooky stuff:

“For decades, the maze-like building was also rumored to be haunted, with many staff recounting run-ins with the ghost of Annie Godfrey Dewey, the first wife of the founder, who had died in 1922. Her apparition was often said to be glimpsed, seated in a rocking chair in the library.”

Seated in a rocking chair? Yikes.

Anyway, we’re here to pick some cars, so let’s take a look at what we have here. It looks pretty cold and snowy, so it’s worth thinking about which of these cars would actually start after a full day of sitting out there, and once started, which one would you actually want to drive.

In an era where people will use the fact that it sometimes rains as an excuse to buy a four-wheel-drive SUV, it’s remarkable to see so mant RWD vehicles here with notoriously lousy traction. I’m pretty sure every car that made it to this lot had either winter tires or chains or both, or they were just left there since autumn.

Let’s take a closer look at some options. Most prominent (and maybe the best choice for the situation) has to be this Subaru, which I thought was wearing the livery of the US Ski Team (which we used as the inspiration for our own Project Ski Klasse), of which the 4×4 Subaru GL was the official car. But when I look at the figure on the side, it doesn’t quite match the official car. Look:

I think that may be a skater, not a skier, on the one in the parking lot? Whoever is on the side there and whatever sports equipment they have strapped to their feet, the Subaru has to be one of the most likely cars there to be able to start and get through all that snow. That’s probably the safe bet. But what else do we have here?

This is an interesting one! An Audi 100LS. These were FWD cars and perhaps would fare better than a lot of that RWD iron out there. It’s definitely an interesting choice. Will it start? Maybe?

There’s two Pintos in that parking lot, too, an older blue one and a later, square-headlight’d yellow one. I don’t recall these being all that great in the snow, but at least if they blow up, there’s plenty of snow around to quench the flames.

This Suburban is probably a decent choice; I rode around in the back of these an awful lot in the 1980s, as they seemed to be the default choice for Scoutmasters – though, tidily, International Scouts and Travelalls were popular, too. The Suburbans of this era were not the luxury cruisers they are today: they were pretty rough things with plaid vinyl seats and painted metal on the interiors and magazines like Consumer Reports were always giving them bad ratings, but I have a lot of fond memories of these.

Look at this! Just because it’s cold doesn’t mean you can’t be classy. That’s a Chrysler Cordoba, the car that offered – should you be deemed worthy – rich, Corinthian leather.

Here’s another interesting option: a Peugeot 504 wagon! If it’s a diesel one, you may be boned, as I don’t see a block heater or anything like that. Maybe the owner has a lot of kerosene in the fuel, an old cold-weather diesel trick our own The Bishop was telling me about. It’s easy to forget that once there were a decent number of Peugeots on American roads.

You could try your luck with this ’73-ish Pontiac Grand Prix, a car that I suspect is garbage in the snow. But who knows? It got there, after all!

I think that’s a Saab 99 back there, a notchback one. It’s tricky to tell, but I think it is. That’s a good FWD choice, coming from a climate where this kind of weather is just mundane and expected.

That’s not all the cars, though, so comb through this carefully and make your pick! Tell us what you chose in the comments and why! This is important to figure out now, before you fall in a wormhole and end up in 1980 Lake Placid, so choose wisely!