Norwegian gearheads on the right Way

The Suzuki Carry ’s one o’ them itty-bitty trucks straight outta Japan. Now, I ain’t seen too many of ’em here in Norway, but I reckon they’ve been kinda popular all up and down the coast, from Agder clear up to Troms. So if you’re a fisherman, you’ll probably turn some heads drivin’ one o’ these little suckers around. And since it’s such a tiny rig, you can drive the hell outta it on those narrow, twisty West Coast roads, just as long as you know what you’re doin’ behind the wheel, cowboy. And here’s a link to a video where someone done went and turned a Suzuki Carry into an electric truck: YouTube .

I’ve jawed about these rigs before, mostly the Pontiac Trans Sport, which was the main model and by far the most popular one. But truth is, they also made two more versions, one badged as an Oldsmobile and another as a Chevrolet. Now, I got me an uncle who was fixin’ to buy himself a Pontiac Trans Sport 7-seater with a V6 engine back in 2006. But wouldn’t ya know it, he ended up settlin’ for one o’ them plain ol’ Volvo XC90s, with a five-cylinder Volvo turbodiesel. Why? ’Cause by then, you couldn’t find a dang importer for Pontiac in Norway anymore. Funny thing is, back in the late ’70s, when he was livin’ in the States, that same uncle used to tear up the streets in a mean-lookin’ Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. I even wrote about it in my street car blog . That car was the real deal. What’s tragic, and I mean real sad, is how America’s been slowly killin’ off its own auto industry ever since the 1970s. They started churnin’ out boring, watered-down rides toward the end of that decade, an...

These rigs were used by the Norwegian military all the way from the 1960s up till around the year 2000. Now, they stopped makin’ ’em back in the ’80s, sure enough but they kept runnin’ strong for decades after. That’s why these ain’t just some regular ol’ boy’s street car from the ’90s or early 2000s, no sir, these are proper veteran machines! Now the big difference between this rig and somethin’ like a Volkswagen Samba bus, a Mini Morris, a Lada 2106, or even one o’ them ol’ Bugs (that kept on rollin’ off the line well past 2000), is that this here’s a military-grade truck. She was built tough, by the book, to meet strict-as-hell standards when it came to quality and maintenance. This ol’ Volvo, folks call it the “Felt” or “Valp” back in Norway, didn’t even hit the used market till sometime between the ’90s and 2000s, when the army started sellin’ ’em off. And let me tell ya, even if they were decades old by then, most of ‘em felt like damn near new. Nowadays, these Volvos range an...

This here car was driven by a real-deal rock 'n' roll fella I used to know. That Renault 19 she was built from '88 to '97. The one he had was a '92 model, and he told me he once floored it all the way up to 180 kilometers an hour, scared the piss outta himself doin’ it. The design’s real plain and kinda old-school, which I actually kinda dig. These rides might still be good for cruisin’ and raisin’ a little hell for another ten years or so ‘fore folks start callin’ ‘em proper vintage.

Now the Nissan Junior — man, them’s some badass rigs. Japanese in origin, sure, but they look every bit like them old-school American pickup trucks from the ‘70s and ‘80s. Thing is, they kept crankin’ these things out in Iran all the way up ‘til 2020. That’s right — twenty freakin’ twenty. You could probably still pick one up over in Iran (before the war) while you’re on one o’ them so-called sun-soaked Abu Dhabi vacations. Then just load up your gear and head on home — either like some wild-eyed Persian road warrior or a mad Norwegian crusader like ol’ Sigurd Jorsalfar. Which one’s worse? Hell if I know — but either way, sounds like one hell of a ride. Reckon it might even be as epic as that fella I wrote about in another post, who drove his Chevy Camaro Z28 all the way to Turkey and back just to get it fixed. Now that’s dedication. Round trip to Turkey’s ‘bout the same distance as haulin’ back from Iran — maybe even farther. ‘Cept you ain’t flyin’, you’re drivin’ that beast all the...

(Opel Vectra) The Opel Vectra was one o’ them cars that hung onto that 1980s look all the way up till ‘bout 1995. You could get it with a 1.7, a 2.0, or even a big ol’ 2.5-liter V6 — not bad for a car that wasn’t much bigger than a possum on stilts. One time, back in the year 2000, I got a ride all the way up to Norefjell in a Vectra. Now, that car was at least five years old by then, but I was real impressed it had one o’ them fancy digital thermometers showin’ the outside temp. See, my old man was drivin’ around in a crusty ol’ Ford Sierra at the time, and he’d just swapped out his ‘85 Toyota Carina for a dang Citroën Berlingo — and neither of ‘em had no outside temp readout. Even though it was dead o’ January, the coldest it got was only ‘round 17 below (that’s Celsius, mind ya) past Sokna. Most places out there usually hit -20 or even -30 that time o’ year, but this trip was downright mild. Temps stayed steady between zero and -12 most o’ the way. Now that spot west o’ Sokna, whe...

Mercedes-Benz Vario had 'bout the same look as the old Mercedes T1, which I done wrote about in an earlier post . It came out the year after that one stopped rollin’ off the line, and with that there boxy 1980s look, they kept on buildin’ it all the way up till 2013. Back when I used to ride the school bus a whole lot, I always thought it was coolest when I got to ride in one o’ them big ol’ Mercedes 412 Sprinter vans — the ones with 17 seats. That was the king o’ the school minibuses right there. Since then, I been keepin’ my eyes peeled for even bigger models — reckonin’ there might be some that could haul 21 folks or more. And sure enough, after takin’ a few trips ‘round Oslo, I spotted a Mercedes Vario parked up by Frogner, right across from one of them fancy Frogner House Apartments. Now I remember thinkin’ back then — and many a time since — if that there van belonged to the American Embassy, or maybe some other big-shot embassy in the neighborhood, seein’ as they got plenty ...