Swedish cars

[Jim Bow]

“Rune drove a Volvo, but later he bought a BMW. You just couldn’t reason with a person who behaved like that.”

Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

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[Hugh MacD]

Re: Swedish cars

NICE! I had a 444 sedan that I loved. One of the cars I truly wish I still had.

[TerryLL]

Re: Swedish cars

So, not another Saab story?

[John Meachen]

Re: Swedish cars

Could have been one of these.

[heimlaga]

Re: Swedish cars

Saab 99 was the best car Saab ever made. Then it started going downhill.

Volvo peaked with the 240 series or maybe the 740 series. After that no Volvos worthy of the name were made.

[Nicholas Carey]

Re: Swedish cars

Saab 99 was the best car Saab ever made. Then it started going downhill.

The original 2-cycle Saab 99? Yes. Our Saab 9000 was pretty great, though. But after GM got its mitts on Saab, all downhill from there.

[stromborg]

Re: Swedish cars


My parents came back from Guam to have me on US soil and then Karl was sent to Naples Italy where they bought a P130 a lot like this but in white. Family lore is that I had the Grand European Tour in the backseat before we left the Navy to come back to California in 1969. Even after he divorced my mom I thought I would inherit the car but shortly after hooking up with the woman who would become my wicked stepmother he made yet another questionable decision and traded in the Volvo for, of all things, a bright green Ford Fiesta.

[PatrickXavier]

Re: Swedish cars



I owned exactly this colour ("bronze", from memory) 1977 Saab 99 EMS (right-hand drive, though, so windscreen wipers also faced this way) when I lived in the UK in the late 1980s. I loved it, especially the massively deep and curved windscreen and central ignition, and was bereft on returning to NZ necessarily without it. (Previously in NZ, I'd owned Citroëns: 2CV, GS and ID.) First weekend back in Auckland, I opened up the local newspaper at the 'Cars for Sale' page. Amazingly, there was exactly the same year and colour 99 EMS for sale here. I shot round to the advertised address in Western Springs, took it for a drive down the north-western motorway to exactly the same feeling I had on England's M1 and pressed the purchase price into the vendor's hands without the teeniest haggle. Unfortunately for me, it was New Zealand's only Saab 99 EMS. After a few months of motoring joy, it required a couple of replacement parts. Which had to come from Sweden. In the late 1980s, that was logistics measured in months. And, a few weeks after getting it back on the road, the same again. When that happened a third time, I traded it to a local Saab mechanic for his 900 T. As I got more grown up, that became a 9000 Aero. All pre-GM. When Saab turned up its toes, I reverted to Volvo, progressively S80, C70 and now XC40. But I've been contemplating if I might convert an old Saab into a BEV. Seems a constructive project now my last one finally is complete.

[Garret]

Re: Swedish cars

I won't repeat myself on my opinion of what GM did to Saab, but I've had a lot of Volvos too. A61 P1800 (the "P" went from 61-63 for cars made in England & was dropped when production moved to Sweden) just like the Saint's but rustier was my first one. What a wonderful car until a friend blew it up. Various 122's - mostly wagons - did yeoman's duty until 140's became available at an affordable price. 140's were known as "the hippie pickup" in VT in the 70's & later the 240's - though not quite to the same extent. You'd be amazed how much lumber/firewood a 122 wagon can carry with the rear seat down & a full length roof rack!

Volvos of that era were simple, honest, rugged transportation - completely unlike what they are today, though the god-awful V6 in the 260 series was a precursor of later tendencies. With the introduction the the XC series, according to foreign car repair shops around here, Volvo blew past Audi as the most expensive car for repairs. As an example, instead of putting an access panel in the back floor, replacing a fuel pump requires removing the entire rear suspension assembly, then the tank. One friend refers to the "$1500 oil change" as when they're brought in to get the oil change they find so much else wrong.

[sp_clark]

Re: Swedish cars

The original 2-cycle Saab 99?

Um, the 2-cycle engine stopped with the introduction of the model 99 in 1968.

I began a long term relationship with various SAABS in June of 1970, with a brief intermission around 1985 when a leased Mitsubishi Mirage Turbo 'mid-life crisis' intervened.

Replaced that'n with another 900-T, the lineage continued up to about 1998 when the '95 900-T I'd bought used suffered such extensive lot-rot of wiring loom it couldn't be returned to anything like reliable, daily transport.

Over those years recurring issues I endured with their manual transmissions were the single most frequent mechanical problem. Driving ~ 60,000 miles a year took its toll.

Loved it madly when they introduced heated seats up front decades before they appeared on anything else sold in the Midwest.

Our Saab 9000 was pretty great, though. But after GM got its mitts on Saab, all downhill from there.

Parents had a 9000-T, they loved it. They'd had a few 99's & 900's too over the years, though driven much less than what I can claim.

GM's 1989 buy-in was the death knell for cert. You can still see what they stole from SAAB in the few Saturns that remain on our roads, but as innovative as that brand's engineering was they never had anything approaching what a SAAB gave its owner.

"As the brand has an unusual image in most markets, Saab owners tend to be correspondingly offbeat: intellectuals and enthusiasts. In his studies of brand communities, Albert Muniz, professor of marketing at DePaul University in Chicago, found significant characteristics of Saab owners which he called Snaabery."

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...bumpersticker

[Sandlapper]

Re: Swedish cars

I think many here are way too critical. My son had two Saabs, a 2003 and a later year one. Both were extremely easy driving cars but the low seats were not for old bones.

[Gerarddm]

Re: Swedish cars

The old 2-stroke 3 cylinder was the SAAB 93, followed by the 95. I had both. The trick on the highway was to get up to speed, then drive 1/4 mile ahead, picking holes in traffic to dart through so you kept your speed up and never used the brakes, or else it would take forever to get back up to 60MPH.

Loved the free wheel feature.

[Garret]

Re: Swedish cars

The old 2-stroke 3 cylinder was the SAAB 93, followed by the 95. I had both. The trick on the highway was to get up to speed, then drive 1/4 mile ahead, picking holes in traffic to dart through so you kept your speed up and never used the brakes, or else it would take forever to get back up to 60MPH.

Loved the free wheel feature.

Actually, the 96 was the sedan & the 95 was the wagon. Ring ding ding! Once they went to the V4, it was too powerful for the freewheel mechanism & they either had to be repaired often, or most commonly welded - which eliminated the freewheel but meant you weren't sitting at a stoplight with the car acting like it was in neutral...

Anyone who thought the 2 strokes were underpowered needs to drive a 190D Mercedes: 0-60 in under 60 seconds meant you were going downhill. I took my driver's license test in my dad's 190D & the DMV guy was getting ticked off at how long I waited to pull out into traffic. Once I got out into it & floored it, he understood. He could not believe that a car with so little acceleration was legal.

I never had a 92 (the precursor to the 93), but had a couple of 93's (2 stroke & V4), a 95, many 99's, many 900's (turbo & naturally aspirated), a 9000 & then a GM 9-3 wagon. While the 9-3 was nicer than many of its competitors, it did not compare well with real Saabs.

The bumper sticker in post #10 summarizes my feelings perfectly.

[birlinn]

Re: Swedish cars

Late model Saab 96's had the German Ford V-4 engine replacing the earlier 2-strokes.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Re: Swedish cars

My father had, following WW2,
… a rather dishy Alvis two door tourer
An Austin Cambridge derisively called “the family car” after I arrived
A very desirable (now!) Land Rover 2a LWB Station Wagon (in Somalia)
Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire (favourite car) in Libya.
Volvo 122 (“bullet proof - and I bought all those metric spanners!”
Volvo 142 (“almost bullet proof”)
(in retirement) discovered the road holding on a Mini…