Back outside, here's a look along the front of the store -- it looks pretty cool from this angle too! I didn't notice it at the time, but is that a Saab convertible driving along the front of the store? That's not a car you see every day! It's amusing how as the cool Pavilions turns into the boring strip mall in the background, the cars also turn more boring, with one of those second-generation Honda Odysseys that used to be absolutely everywhere (and are still pretty common in the northwest) coming around the corner.
While 1990s Toyota trucks are hardly uncommon here in Houston, Saabs certainly aren't common here! I don't think Saabs of that era are common anywhere in the US so it is interesting that there is one in front of the Pavilions. Granted, there isn't anything too remarkable about that era of Saab. Those Saab 9-3s were based on the GM Epsilon platform and is thus related to the much more common, and still visible here, Chevrolet Malibus, Pontiac G6s, and Saturn Auras.
ReplyDeleteNow that I've typed Pontiac and Saturn, and on the topic of convertibles, it has been a long, long time since I've seen one of those Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky roadsters. They were reasonably popular around the turn of 2000s-2010s, but I have not seen one in a long time. I guess there isn't much of a market for used GM 2-seaters from defunct brands.
Those 2nd gen Honda Odyssey vans were popular here at one time, but they aren't so common to see around here anymore. They were known for automatic transmission problems and perhaps the high heat here made them even more failure prone than in the NW. Oddly enough, I did recently see a Mercury Villager (which was mostly a Nissan product) here recently for the first time in a long time.