A few days ago I learned through a business news e-mail that Saab, an auto company owned by General Motors since the early ‘90's, filed in Sweden for bankruptcy protection. The company expects this will lead to new investors and the ability to become an independent auto maker again. Or, of course, it may just go out of business.

I own a Saab. It’s the second one I’ve owned. It’s seven years old. I drove the first one for ten years. My keeping a car for a long time may have contributed to Saab’s problems of poor sales. But that’s another story.

This story is about my owning cars built by companies that have gone out of business. I’ve owned quite a few. It started with the very first car I drove after I got my license. It was my father’s Kaiser. It was called the Kaiser Traveler. It was not a handsome car. It was pretty utilitarian. Although it looked liked a 4-door sedan the back end opened up. The trunk lid and rear window area lifted as a single door. The seats folded down. It was very much like a station wagon, but in disguise. It also had a very odd feature. Although it had four doors, the rear door on the driver’s side did not open. The spare tire was fixed to the inside panel of that door.

I believe my dad had at least two other Kaiser’s before the company went out of business in 1955. I even had one for a year or so when I was at school. Of course it was much used when I purchased it but it served it’s purpose. I went through several other used cars during those college days. One of them was a Raymond Lowey designed 1953 Studebaker. It was a good looking car, but it didn’t last long. The Studebaker company didn’t last much longer either. It was gone by the mid-1960's.

My first new car, after I was married, was an American Motors Hornet. It was a true station wagon. It got very poor reviews in Consumer’s Report Magazine and that may have contributed to American Motors going out of business during the late 1980's. But, In spite of that magazine’s rating, the Hornet ran well for 12 years and just under 130,000 miles. Oh, we also had another car during that time. My wife had purchased a brand new Austin-Healey Sprite a year before I met her. We kept that car for about ten years. That company is now also out of business.

After the Hornet I purchased a used Plymouth. This was followed up with the purchase of a brand new Plymouth, a Plymouth Horizon. Unfortunately the Horizon was a mechanical disaster. I got rid of it with less than 40,000 miles on the odometer. In 2001 Chrysler Corporation dropped the Plymouth line of cars from its offering. Another one of my brands, gone.

In the period between the Plymouth and my Saabs I’ve had several used cars, including two Peugeots. These were very nice sedans. Unfortunately, although Peugeot has not gone out of business, the company stopped selling cars in the U.S. and Canada. You can still buy one in Mexico. ¿Habla Espanol?

Admittedly these auto company failures were more complicated than I’ve just described. There were mergers before failures and mergers after failures. Kaiser was Kaiser-Fraser before it became Kaiser before it went bust. American Motors grew out of Nash-Kelvinator Corportation and the Hudson Car Company. It then became AMC which formed a partnership with French Renault. It then disappeared with a purchase by Chrysler Corporation. Studebaker merged with Packard Motor Car Company before it went bust. Plymouth disappeared after Chrysler merged with Germany’s Daimler.

It’s clear the business of manufacturing and selling automobiles is a complicated endeavor. It has successes and failures. That’s the reality. Meanwhile, the politicians in Washington don’t seem to understand this. For political purposes they are debating the salvation of General Motors and Chrysler Corporation. They propose giving these companies dollars in amounts I cannot comprehend. It astounds me. I wish they’d stick to the business of governing and let we consumers decide the business of business.

In a year or so I will likely begin looking for my Saab’s replacement. Will my Saab dealer still be around? Will Saab, the automobile company, still be around? Frankly, it doesn’t matter. I’m sure there will always be something out there for me to drive.

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