SAAB VS. SCEPTICISM

View Original

Saab Life

It’s been a busy few weeks as far as Saabs are concerned, coming and goings, parts arriving and respected folks finally met.

As anyone having kept up with my various Saabs will now, I have a gorgeous, Graphite Green 9-5 Aero rescued from the breakers about a year ago, It needed a lot of work to get it back on track, which we did, but then the replacement engine let me down. Last week, I was offered a hugely interesting donor Saab with a highly modified engine and gearbox; maybe the perfect answer to get the Graphite Green Aero finally running. I made a deal to px a lovely, low milage Vector 2.3t for it and also had the pleasure of meeting Peter Raw, who’d offered me the car and kindly drove it down for me.

Although not running great yet, the engine is indeed a bit special; running around 350hp and with a superb, lsd, manual gearbox, the car also comes with huge MapTun brakes, Bilstien suspension and a hoist of other goodies I can rescue. It would mean converting an Auto to a Manual though, and we’re just weighing up the costs of doing such a conversion. It would, however, give me, my perfect Saab 9-5 Aero.

I’ve also bought a few old Audio units from Peter, old school, high end audio for a Saab 9000, we’re not entirely sure what each one does, but I’ll have a lot of pleasure working with you guys them all out and hopefully, fitting them to the 9000 Aero. I’ve also managed to get hold of a great condition high level brake light and rear light bar for the 9000 too, all details to help give a bit of life to the black Aero.

Lastly, the beautiful Saab 9-5 Hirsch Sportwagon was collected on Sunday, designed for its new home in Ireland. It’s one of my nicest cars to date, and hopefully, will be enjoyed for many more years now. I have to admit, I was a little sad at letting it go, the rare Hirsch Performance package, classic wheels, heated and vented interior and HK audio upgrade made it a very special Saab, they’re getting difficult to find in normal specification now, let alone a Hirsch wagon.

I’m sure there’s more to share, but felt I needed to scribble down a few whilst I remembered, finger’s crossed for the Graphite Green resurrection, I can’t let it go just yet.