Buying a Car in Israel in 1980 and Today: Tesla

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                   

                       It's an electric car.  

Tesla, Inc. is an American multinational automotive and clean energy company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Above is their model S.  The Model S is a five-door liftback sedan. Deliveries began on June 22, 2012. The car became the first electric vehicle to top the monthly sales ranking in any country, when it achieved first place in the Norwegian new car sales list in September 2013. The Model S won the 2013 Motor Trend Car of the Year, the 2013 "World Green Car", Automobile magazine's 2013 "Car of the Year", Time magazine's Best 25 Inventions of the Year 2012 award, as well as the 2019 Motor Trend "Ultimate Car of the Year".

The Model S was the bestselling plug-in electric car worldwide for the years 2015 and 2016, selling an estimated 50,931 units in 2016. By the end of 2017, it was the world's second best selling plug-in electric car in history (after the Nissan Leaf), with global sales of 200,000 units. In June 2020, Tesla announced that the Model S Long Range Plus had an EPA range of 402 miles (647 km), the highest of any battery electric vehicle at the time.               

Tesla is reportedly planning to set up a large sales and service center in Netanya. The new center will feature Tesla’s first permanent showroom in Israel, and a bodywork and paint workshop that will replace Tesla’s existing small garage next to the company’s current management headquarters in Israel in Kiryat Ata. Since it started selling in Israel in 2021, Tesla has sold 10,000 cars in Israel.

The red Fiat, our dog, Blintz that came with us from Ontario, Oregon, and myself in the winter.  It was cold and windy in Safed (Tzfat).  This was a hatchback.  I loved it. The background is our apartment building.  We lived on the bottom floor, so we had use of the patio where there were clothes lines.  I didn't wear trousers then, just skirts.  

When my husband and I needed a car badly in Israel, immigrated in (September 1980) we finally went to a Fiat distributer and ordered a car out of a catalog like Sears catalogue and waited.  It came directly from Italy, red and shiny.  There were no car centers then which was around 1981-1982.  We had to pay cash;  no monthly installments.                                                                          

Israel 1948-1949 Miss Halaby gets out of her car Date: 1948 Location: Israel  Personal name: Mandelbaum, Tor

In 1948, when Israel was created again after being overcome by Rome in 70 CE and destroyed, cars looked like this. Actually, there was no Miss Israel happing yet in 1948.  

                                            

                  1948 Dodge

                                              

                 1948 Lincoln Sedan

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.