Jason's summation of the odd vehicle known as Saab is right on target. It was THE automobile to pile all of your friends in and zoom up Little Cottonwood Canyon, passing everyone on the road, to ski all day at Alta. The Saab 900S, especially the convertible, will be missed. But I've since been spoiled by Peugeot in Argentina.
But I have no tears for the rest on the list. Especially United Airlines. Friendly skies my ass!
However, there are still companies and brands that haven't existed for years that I sorely miss. I don't miss Pan Am. But I do miss Trans World Airways. My first time in an airplane when I was around 4 or 5 years old was on a TWA Constellation. Me, dressed in a gray tweed little boy jacket, white shirt, red tie with coordinated gray short pants and Buster Browns. Everyone dressed in wool travel clothes and zaftig women dripping in pearls and dead weasel wraps. And those strange Mamie Eisenhower-style hats!
I recently waned fondly over the demise of Western Airlines that offered everyone at least one glass of free champagne regardless of the time of the flight. "Western Airlines, the only way to fly," spoken by a patrician canary reclining against the cartoon tail of a 727 and sipping champagne. At 6:30 AM you'd crawl on board with sleep schmutz still in your eyes and a flight attendant would appear out of nowhere with a tray of cheap plastic champagne cocktail glasses, and smiling sweetly. Often they'd let you have two or more because the mormons who flew out of Western's Salt Lake hub would cordially decline the devil's brew and the stuff was flat and useless when they arrived in LA, San Francisco, Denver, New York, Chicago, Seattle. Those bottles had caps instead of corks, so the bubbles didn't last long. It was cheap champagne, but it didn't matter. They made you feel welcome. Then they were suddenly absorbed into Delta like The Blob and the largest buyer of cheap champagne-style California bubbly caused a ripple effect in the economies of Napa and Fresno.
I miss Bosco. Someone told me it's still available somewhere in the world, but I'll be damned if I can find it. It didn't mix with milk as easily as Nestle's Chocolate Syrup, but it was richer and darker. And you could get an almost opiate-like buzz if you ate a couple of spoonfuls directly from the jar.
We always had Buicks, (white trash families such as mine would never consider buying a Cadillac). I'd still like to have my mother's 2003 Park Avenue Ultra, but my brother needed a daily driver more than I did. Now it sits in his driveway sans timing belt in Taylorsville, Ewetaw along with several engine blocks and the rusting skeleton of an AMC Scout and an old bathtub and washing machine. Yup, his neighbor's are thrilled to have him in the subdivision. But if Buick disappears, I'll understand why. The turbo-charged V6 in that 2003 dinoglide sedan would easily sip gasoline at a lady-like 32 to 35 mpg on the highway. The new V6 in the Buick Lucernes (what the fuck is a name like Lucerne, anyway? GM tries to sound Swiss/French and comes across with the name of the West's most popular hybrid clover raised for hay?), anyway, the new V6 sucks up 25 to 31 mpg on those same highways with the same emission ratings for a smaller car? It's time GM engineers returned to using slide rules.
But I can't forgive Barnes and Noble closing their little cathedral-like Manhattan landmark store. If I need a book in English, Amazon is just a few keystrokes away, and they now direct you to local vendors if you live in a foreign county whenever possible in addition to their own stocks. Hope they survive, despite their wierd political affiliations and worker's rights problems.
But one chain of stores, although many have closed, is still plugging away: Radio Shack. Where else are you going to find a 20 year-old vintage transistor -- in packs of six -- when you need one? Somehow Radio Shack still exists out in the hinterlands of the Great USA. And I hope they continue to slug along. They are a refuge for nerdy social misfits that need hold-over jobs until the local chip manufacturing plant starts hiring again. And those same employees are highly respected in the Dungeon and Dragon circles.