ode to saab. "the black peril" r.i.p. 1990-2010.

i thought the cover for this 1985 saab spg was cool, even though mine is/was a 1990. a sad thing occurred yesterday. i was rear-ended on my typical drive to work. luckily no one was injured, but my car bore the brunt of most of the damage, getting the rear passenger side shoved in quite badly. some other odd damage was done as a result, but i'll try not to dwell on it. it is a loss.

i know it sounds weirdly sentimental to want to pay tribute to a car, but i. love. this. car. i found it online on one of those big auto sale websites, through a dealership in new york state. i paid an extra $1000 to have it shipped to me on one of those snazzy car-carrier trucks, and picked it up at 5:30am one morning in a piggly wiggly parking lot. crazy, yes. but i don't think i have ever been happier to be driving a car.

the saab 900 spg is seriously my dream car. it was. it still is wayyy high on my list of coolest cars ever made. it is the second 900 i've owned -- the first was a 1985 super basic, cream-colored 900. the 1990 spg was a serious upgrade -- sunroof, turbo, cruise control, power locks, spoiler, leather interior... it was just a nicer car, period. and it really didn't give me too much trouble, considering how old it was, and i had no service records on it whatsoever.

i've had it for a little shy of 4 years. after a ford f-150 pulled out in front of me mid-winter last year and i banged up the front end, things started going gradually downhill. the clutch went out, the wiring is bad (infamous saab electrical mysteries), the engine probably needed some serious work. but i didn't care! it got me from a to b -- and in style! serious style. i felt like queen of the road in that thing, and i don't care what anyone else thinks.

saabs are awesome because:

1. their shape is bizarre. i love how weird they look. they're like nothing else out there.

2. the ignition is in the center console! so every time you drive, it's like starting up a go-kart. the only part where this becomes an issue is if you're drinking a latte and spill it in between the seats.. if it gets in the ignition, you're fucked.

3. the turbos are zippy. it feels like you're driving tank, but they are still fast. a saab can be both.

4. the body kit and hubs on the spg are hot.

5. they're made in SWEDEN! hello!!

saabs -- when they were owned by saab, made by saab and not general motors (who cares about new saabs? not me.) -- are the coolest cars out there. i have a serious european auto bias, okay, i'll cop to that. and it might be that because all i've ever driven were saabs, i'm hopelessly in favor of them. but they really are the coolest-looking cars on the road.

the photos below are of a diagram of the 1985 spg body kit (what makes it awesome), and the final photo is of my own car, post-trauma, sitting in the towing storage lot. you can't see it behind mine, but there was a brand new saab that had a front end looking three times as bad as mine and full of mud. i think there may have been some high speed and a ditch involved there. :(

anyway. this is an ode to the coolest cars ever made. r.i.p. saabie.

sierra alpha alpha bravo

this commercial is from the u.k., 1988... at that point they'd been making the car that i have now for about three years. in 1990 (which is the year of mine), they imported 771 to the states, in grey, red, and black. they called it a 16s, other parts of europe called it an aero, and in the u.s. they called it an spg (special performance group). special is right! :) i'm all amped up because after getting an oil change and a fixer-upper on the brakes and the clutch, mine is back on the road! saabs are notoriously hard to take care of, but the two cars i've ever owned have been saabs, and this one is really a great car. but more than anything, it just needs babying sometimes. but that's no problem, because it is my baby. :)

i ordered mine online, actually -- risky! i know! -- and had it shipped to me via open truck transport and picked it up in the grocery store parking lot one morning at 5am. it had no service history whatsoever, so all of the mechanical crap has always been a shot in the dark. and of course, when i got into that fender-bender this past winter, lo-and-behold what came off was a bondo fix-up over a body that had clearly been hit before. sad to see.

alas, every time i send it to get repairs, i'm always so excited to get it back... i've been driving around a land rover discovery while it's been worked on the last couple weeks, and even after driving around a piece of luxury like that, i still am so happy to get back into my 900 spg. it's my baby, what can i say. :)

plus, it turns into a jet when i drive it off of cliffs.