Finland in the 1990s, other than being the place and time where I grew up, was yet again defined by its location between east and west. Our Eastern neighbor, the Soviet Union, had ceased to exist in the early years of the decade and the American Dollar and the free market quickly filled the power vacuum in Russia. Finland itself was hit hard by the early 1990s economic downturn and depression, which wiped out businesses left and right and dropped new car sales from the proverbial cliff: in 1993, less than a third were registered compared to the heyday of 1989.
If there was anything that brought us back from the brink, it would have been the mobile phone brand Nokia that grasped the NMT-GSM zeitgeist with clever, durable design, as well as Finland winning the 1995 ice hockey world championship. After the final, people crowded the towns’ marketplaces, droptop American cars cruised the streets with Finnish flags, and a sense of pride filled the hearts of even those who couldn’t give two hoots about ice hockey.
People walking through the Helsinki city center towards the Market Square after the ice hockey championship victory, escorting a Cadillac. Photo: Finnish Heritage Agency
Importantly, we beat Sweden in the final game, at the Globen hall in Stockholm. The rays of the May sun never shone brighter. Canada got bronze, the US team was sixth.
Saab and Calibra production in Uusikaupunki / Photo: Valmet Automotive
In the 1990s, the sole existing passenger car manufacturing facility in Finland, located on the west coast, churned out a wide variety of cars, some of them in partnership with General Motors. Saab production at Valmet would continue until the 2000s, moving from one Seinfeld Saab to another; alongside it, the Opel Calibra and Porsche Boxster would start production, as well as the lightly facelifted Lada Samara. Ladas were strong sellers in Finland back in the day, as they were in 1984, the year of my birth, when Lada enjoyed an almost ten percent market share.
In addition to domestically produced heavy trucks, the Finnish military still rode around on Soviet steel thanks to earlier trade deals: by the time I did my mandatory year in the Defence Forces in the early 2000s, you could still see the odd GAZ, KrAZ and UAZ parked at the depots. The humdrum blue wagons with watchtower insignia were mostly diesel Golfs, but for ages, they were Lada 2104 wagons instead.
Official State Business
As for state cars on the executive level, the Saab 9000 or the Volvo 960 were the obvious choices, flanked by the Mercedes-Benz W140 that somehow embodied the spirit of the 1990s. It even looked like a politician, and with the standard wheel size that disappeared under the wheel arches, as if wearing an ill-fitting suit.
Amongst all the navy blue or black Saabs and Volvos, the big S-Class would have been the car that stood out the most, were it not for three particular cars that outshone them in any official capacity in the late 1990s.
Three Chevrolet Impala SS sedans.
For some reason, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs selected three Impala SS models for its official use. They were plated at midsummer 1996, just before the Atlanta Summer Olympics, and by fall, the Impala SS would vanish from the Chevrolet price list. Either somebody in charge of choosing cars wasn’t afraid of ordering something special, or the official importer cut them a deal for cars already in the country.
The Heartbeat of America – In Finland
An Impala SS parked next to another GM sedan: the Opel Kadett
The cars were priced keenly at 329,800 Finnish Marks, which works out to $108k today; if that sounds expensive, the Chrysler Vision was priced very similarly at 322k FIM, the newly introduced Mercedes-Benz W210 at a strong 334k for the 136-horsepower E 200 base model, and the Lexus GS300 at an eye-watering 471,600 FIM, which would be $155k today. You couldn’t get a 1996 Mercedes S-Class for much less than 600k FIM.
Those Lada wagons I mentioned earlier? 50k FIM, or a little less than $17k today, would have gotten you a top-of-the-line 1700i wagon, with fuel injection from General Motors. As for other regular cars, a base, three-door, 1.4-liter Corolla was 90k ($29k today) and a four-cylinder Camry at 212k; a Saab 9000 CD sedan and a Volvo 940 were cheaper than a base Camry at 199k and 205k, respectively.
Looking back, the Impala SS seems like a deal, especially as you couldn’t get much change from 300,000 FIM were you to pick a regular Caprice Classic. Factor in the fact that Impala SS production was slated to end by the end of the year, and it probably made a lot of sense to take three of them under the state’s wing.
It’s A Caprice, But Not Just A Caprice
Brand new Caprices at the Chevy dealer in Helsinki
Compared to the regular-issue, bench-seat Chevrolet Caprice Classic, the Impala SS was the sports version, for a lack of a better term. The brainchild of GM’s Special Vehicle Group manager, Jon Moss, it transformed the grandfatherly “Bubble” Caprice into something more bad-to-the-bone with body colour trim and billet-look 17-inch wheels, with the Chevy bowtie proudly displayed in the middle of the grille. It was far more Last Action Hero than Matlock, especially as the suspension was police package specification. MotorWeek called it the “coolest big GM car in years”, and the road presence was undeniable.
You could get the 260-horsepower LT1 engine in the Caprice as well, but without all the visual drama: there was a Caprice SS as well, but that was simply the Impala SS marketed in the Middle East with a different badge.
Photo: Chevrolet
Inside, there were round gauges instead of the regular, horizontal speedometer, and a floor shift instead of the usual column shift. Chevrolet hadn’t sold an Impala sedan for nearly a decade, and the round logo made a comeback on the car’s sheetmetal. Along with the emblem, the C-pillars introduced the slight Hofmeister kink that the Caprice would also adopt for the final years. For 1996, the Impala SS gained completely analog gauges, compared to 1994-1995 models, which had a digital speedometer.
MotorWeek also tested a souped-up, manual gearshift SS in 1995, which at 308 horsepower was more powerful than the Corvette of the time. The transmission came from the Camaro Z28, and fitting it required some massaging of the transmission tunnel. 60 mph was achieved in six seconds, easily two seconds quicker than an already brisk, stock SS. Its exhaust note sounded like thunder on the prairie.
By 1996, the base Caprice used the 4.3-liter L99 V8 engine with 200hp; the American Embassy in Helsinki had those in its fleet. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs easily outshone those with its choice of LT1-powered Impalas, even if I cannot imagine the two cars stretching their 260-horsepower, 330 lb-ft legs that often. In any case, urban-use fuel consumption was likely a force to be reckoned with, as Finnish fuel has traditionally been expensive. In those days, we would have paid around $6 per gallon in today’s money.
The dark Impala SS maneuvering in front of the Presidential Palace in Finland appears almost black in this photo, taken during a state visit in August 1996, with the Swedish royal family visiting. All the Finnish photos in this article were taken by the car writer and automotive historian Timo Laitinen, who shared them with me.
An amusing anecdote was shared on the Facebook page where these Finnish Impala SS photos were originally posted: apparently, from the back seat of another official car following an Impala came a query: “Is that car in front a new Volga, since it has a moose on the back?”
In addition to the emblem, the cars also bore the logo of the official GM-USA dealer, Metro-Auto.
Where Are They Now?
These last photos show two of the cars together at the courtyard of the ministry, in Katajanokka, Helsinki. The three cars were retired from official use in 2002, and one of them is still going strong: publicly available data from Traficom, the Finnish transport authority, shows it had 356,000 km on the clock at last inspection, which took place in December 2025.
The two other cars have been unregistered since 2017, so they’re either somebody’s projects or parts cars. I certainly hope they’re still car-shaped. There are more in Finland, too, and the late frontman of the death metal band Children of Bodom, Alexi Laiho, had a dark red Impala SS in his collection of American cars.
The Impala SS wasn’t the first American-made sedan in Finnish state use, but as a choice of car, it’s weirdly performance-oriented. These three cars hit the road at a time when Finnish tax loopholes had already been plugged and the wild years of secondhand American imports had ended: you couldn’t register a Caprice wagon as a half-price commercial vehicle anymore, let alone build a pickup version out of a Camaro or a Firebird with the use of a Sawzall and some fiberglass.
But the official Impalas sent a signal to every car person with a Finnish driving license: somewhere, behind closed doors, behind the desk where state car fleets were decided upon, there was a person who cared about cars just like the guy on the street in his Caprice.
[Photos by Timo Laitinen unless otherwise noted]