MY RIDE-Evan Johnson: 1996 Saab 900S

PHOTO BY LAURA BURNS

Evan Johnson likes "Heidi" much better than "Gertrude."  

Heidi is what he calls his Saab 900S– partly a reference to its Scandinavian heritage, and partly because the Saab is a "slicker, supermodel" type of a car. Gertrude, Johnson explains, was "a much older, more fickle car," which was apparently dumped for Heidi.

The hatchback comes in handy when Johnson hauls stuff back and forth between his Fredericksburg home and UVA, where he's a student. He says he has even "fit a couple of bikes in the back to take them up to the Blue Ridge Parkway."

But, he says, the best thing about the car– a gift from his mother– is its manual transmission. 

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