Always a pleasure to stumble upon a Saab that really wows. This Finnish beauty has all of my favourite assets - dark, great stance courtesy of airlift suspension, a decent set of elegantly proportioned alloys and last but not least, it's a 9-5, not another 9-3 which tend to get most of the love these days.
Sadly I don't know much about this Saab other than it was photographed by Lauri Lehto, who is an exceptional landscape and wildlife photographer also based in Finland.
Lauri Lehto | Flickr
Extinction Rebellion sends a sinking home along the River Thames, 85% of Venice underwater including St. Mark’s Basilica and entire villages cut off in South Yorkshire, let’s face it, none of us can be ignorant enough to deny the changes in global weather and yet we still keep on churning out new cars each year that are less and less likely to stand the test of time.
Saab 9-5 Aero | 18 years old | 98,000 Miles | Buy now
Saab 9-3 Aero | 17 years old | 110,000 Miles | Enquire
Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of electric cars with ridiculous acceleration, but I don’t like the environmental cost of building them, it’s not a new concept, but keeping older cars on the roads has got to be more sustainable than building new ones surely.
Take a 15 - 20 year old Saab, renovate it, keep it well serviced and clean running and it’ll outlast most, if not all of the modern cars around today, not only that but they’re exceptionally safe, comfy, reliable, individual and of course, financially wise.
It’s one of the reasons I keep rescuing Saabs, ones that might not seem financially sensible to fix, but with a little work and effort will give many more years of pleasure, safety and reliability, yes they use a little more fuel, but set that off against the impact of an entirely new car with its 30,000 + components, and it seems a worthwhile cause to me.
For my part, I’ll continue recycling used parts, and crafting stylish Saabs until I can no longer do it, a bit of welding here and a few salvaged goodies there is far more exciting to me than any new car available, I also feel good reusing stuff rather than adding more flames to an already roaring fire we’re all facing.
This might be a politically incorrect post, but why not, I currently have to aquaplane across a number of flooded roads to get home, and it’s only getting worse. Be really interested to know how others feel…
When it comes to wheel design, not many marques got it quite so right as Saab, they seemed to create an endless array of beautifully simple styles that remain just as timeless today as they did the year they were launched. From the early Inca and Aero wheels, the later double Y spokes and brutal nailhead wheels they’ve all kept a purity of Scandinavian design that’s hard to beat with any aftermarket alloys.
On my current project, the 9-3 Aero convertible, it already has a set of iconic nailheads, but I’ve always been tempted to push the size up slightly to a set of 18” and only one original Saab design keeps me coming back for more, the Turbo X. After fitting a set of the rarer 19” Carlsson versions to the 9-5 Aero project, it seems only right that the 9-3 should be treated equally, so once the brakes have been totally replaced, we’ll see how they look, I’ve only ever seen them on one other og 9-3 Aero and they looked exceptional.
