Happy Rosh Hashanah! It’s 5785, Bitches!: Cold Start

That’s right, for a tiny fraction of our readers it’s the new year! Because that tiny fraction includes myself, I get to make A Thing of it, which I intend to, so, happy Rosh Hashanah to all who celebrate or, as we Jews tend to say for our too-often somber holidays, “observe” it, or even those who just use it as a flimsy pretense to get off work. All are welcome. And for those of you who aren’t in that tiny fraction, happy new year you don’t care about to you as well! Everyone should have a fantastic 5785, whether they care or not, I say.

It’s tradition to start the new year with something sweet, and apples and honey are very traditional, hence that Corvair with apples in its trunk up there. That was actually featured in a Cold Start way back in late 2022, but it just fit too well here, so I brought it back.

That same post also featured a bunch of Eastern Bloc cars really, really crammed full of apples:

Damn, those people really aren’t taking any chances on having a sweet start to the new year. I wonder if opening the rear doors on those would just send apples cascading out, almost like a liquid, or are they so tightly packed they’d just stay frozen in place?

Anyway, the other part of this new year is that it’s now 5785, because we’ve been counting years a long-ass time. Since the days when we’d be scrolling clay cuneiform proto-Trello looking for reasonable apartments in Ur. Since 5785 makes me think of 1985, the only other “85” year I’ve experienced, let’s look quickly at one of the strangest 1985 carmmaker lineups I’ve seen:

This is Sevel’s 1985 linup. Sevel started as a joint venture from Fiat and Peugeot/Citroën in 1978, and eventually had a branch in Argentina, which is what we’re looking at here. Sevel built a mix of Fiats and Peugeots, but what really makes this special is that they also built Chevy C10 trucks under license.

That Chevy feels so out of place in this lineup, but somehow it’s also what makes this all work. I suppose unsurprisingly, Sevel got absorbed into Stellantis, though the Argentine branch was gone by 1999.

Anyway, I’m mostly off today, so I hope everyone has a fantastic start to 5785!