I’m pretty sure this will be the only non-Saab video I post on this site, so Saab lovers, please read on before you pass this post up – I think you’ll appreciate it. April 7 was my grandfather Carl X. Meyer’s birthday so in honor of his memory, I post this video I shot way back in 1996 in my home town of St. Louis, Missouri. I think my fellow Saab enthusiasts will quickly see why I decided to post this and exactly where my love of Saabs and philosophy about enjoying these cars was instilled early on.

In addition to being my grandfather’s birthday, April 7, was the day he served as the best man at my wedding in 2001. My grandfather taught himself industrial design at the St. Louis Public Library in between shifts as a cook at a restaurant in Downtown St. Louis during the Depression. He managed to turn that self-education into a life-long industrial design career that included designing the lighting on the Harley Davidson Motorcycle factory line that he had watched dreamily as the bikes rolled out of the factory when he was a boy in Milwaukee.

I recently turned over 92,000 miles on my 1988 Saab 900 SPG. It’s always a struggle as I approach a mileage milestone… (especially as I near the 100,000-mile mark) do I keep driving the car or keep the mileage down to preserve it? Luckily I have a 4-mile (total there and back) daily commute – which I split with my 2001 Saab Viggen – so it reduces the day-in-day-out urgency of deciding whether I should protect my ‘daily driver’ or not, but still a person needs a plan and a strategy, right?

Overall, I opt for my grandfather’s philosophy: cars are made to be driven. Especially those we love. That said, here’s to those who preserve them and keep those pristine time-pieces that crop up from time to time to give us all the gift of a perfect, un-aged artifact of our past.

For me, I’ll keep driving my Saabs. The thought of having several hundred thousand miles (maybe even 1,000,000! All hail Peter Gilbert : ) shared between me and my Saab is a lot more exciting to me than having a vintage Saab with low mileage. I also love having my kids climb all over the car and plowing through mud puddles (and even off road as needed), and pushing the car to its limits as a delivery truck, a camping tent, the best place ever to be on a road trip… to use this car as the delivery vehicle to everything I want my life to be. And this includes the continued restoration work to keep it looking and running the best it can after these ‘adventures’ I take alone and with my family.

My grandfather passed away in 2002. Happy Birthday, Grandpa. And here’s to all of the great ones who made a commitment to quality. When all is said and done, true love lives on.

PS. My grandfather never had a middle name. He added the ‘X’ because as a designer, he liked the added balance and mystery it gave to his name. Everyone I knew, forever knew him as ‘Carl X.’