SAAB in crisis-memories of SAABs I´ve known
The car brand SAAB is for sale, GM motors are kicking out Swedens pride, the SAAB cars, of their imperium. (Of course, in Sweden we make Volvo´s as well, but that's not the issue here.)
I grew up in a SAAB, actually several, but the one I travelled the most in was probably our rust-red SAAB 95 combi. It looked much like the one on this photo on the site http://www.fotobengt.se/Bilar.htm
We travelled around in Sweden in this car , 2 adults, 3 kids and a dog or 2. And a caravan after it. Sometimes even with a canoe on the roof.
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Ah, SAABs. After they were bought by GM they stopped making real Swedish cars anyway. I really like the older ones, and can imagine owning a vintage SAAB. But a new one - nope. Here in the US they are so expensive.
But they are truly part of my upbringing. I have a million memories associated with the SAAB 96s. Do you remember when mom bought a bag of dried cod in Norway for our dogs and it smelled so bad she had to tie it to the roof rack? The dogs were crazy about it.
I don´t remember the fish, but i´m sure its true. I do remember our trips in the winter o the swedish mountains, all three kids and dogs lying on top of the luggage on a matress. Today, here, you would never get to travel like that. Kids are supposed to be strapped in with a safety belt. I don´t disagree, but I feel it´s a difference than when we grew up.
Yes, on the mattress, all three of us in the back of the car. And the dog too! I remember mom telling me that I traveled inside a cardboard box once in the very back of the car, as a toddler. the box was open on the top and I found a toiletpaper roll that I slowly fed out through the window. At some point my parents saw a long, long white strip of paper waving after our car and they realized what I had been doing. I don't remember that happening, just the story being told.
I also think you weren't supposed to use seat belts if you were under 12 years old. Today it all sounds crazy, but it was how it was back then. I always had to sit in the middle to keep EH and OK in check too! :)
My first car was a Saab 92 with a two cylinder two-stroke engine (ask PP about the technicalities). It was a cheap buy and I was quite pleased with and said so loudly and then exactly at that moment the engine gave up. I managed to start it again, just about. Next day I took the engine apart and it was not much to do on the roadside - one cylinder and the top was caput (exhaust fumes coming out from the cooler and a cloud of steam from the exhaust pipe). I was on a tour to Gothenburg via Växjö with three friends and we had no choice than try to run it on one cylinder. I remember a very, very slow ascent on the first gear in the long hill upwards when you leave Husqvarna. Thought for a while that I would have to ask my friends to help by pushing it. I left that car at the tip without regrets. So much for old Saabs.
Hello Olle,
But then you bought another SAAB, a 96 from our cousins, and didn't you buy their Saab 900 later too? So you couldn't have given up on SAABs then.
That story about one cylinder is kind of funny, and I know which hill you are talking about. Poor you!
My first own car was a Saab 900, the last real kind before GM destroyed the 900-series. Then a SAAB 9000, which was not at all my favorite - expensive and prone to problems. I think the best car I have ever had is my Subaru Forester.
PS. American readers - 'tip' means dump.
I actually remember the first time I was allowed to sit in the front seat with a belt on, I was twelve and as I recall you had to be a certain height before you could use the belt. There were not rollout belts either, you had to adjust them before use, and you were really strapped in.
Talking about security, do you remember the funny grey-checked helmets mum and dad had in the garage. As I was told they were used as "car-helmets". But I don´t remember them used.
A funny thought though, parents with helmets and belts and 3 kids/toddlers crawling around in the back of the car with the dogs!
The thing about Olle's story is...I really don't think a car that had a similar malfunction today could be made to run AT ALL, let alone complete the journey you made. Machinery in general used to made so one could "limp in" or finish the job. Today with all the electronic controls when your dead that's it. Machines and so much else used to be so much more forgiving...
So true! Like when some mice chewed up the microchip cable in our SAAB 900s engine. You couldn't do anything, and had to buy a whole new microchip, not just the cable. In old cars mice could live in the engine and it would still run.
A little bit about what went wrong with SAAB during the last 20 years:
http://blogg.aftonbladet.se/19401
(Unfortunately this in Swedish, but the bottom line is that it is all GM's fault by building the wrong kind of cars and slapping SAAB-logos onto Subaru's and Chevrolet's. )
Some comments on the SAAB problems from New York Times: link
It doesn't look good for SAAB.
But SAAB is still building other things besides cars right? So the company will survive, but maybe without cars...
To PP. Yes, the old cars had their good sides. Not only did it limp along another 1000 km or so, it was simple enough to allow me to take off the top on the roadside and inspect the disaster, do some small improvements with some tinfoil to stop water from coming in to the engine and down into the oil trough and screw the top back again - without a workshop, just with some borrowed tools. I have always had cars without any electronics and normally I was the last (or the next last in a few cases) of the car. The worst disaster car I ever had was a Simca 1100 (?). The three Saab's, (they were three indeed but 92, 95 and 96 if I remember right, were all doing fairly well.
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