As pointed out by Ted in recent comments (and I think by someone else in some other comments) there's some pretty open pictures of a Saffron Yellow 9-3 Convertible (Aero) outside the Saab Museum here.
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You can tell it's really building up here.
It's now easier to count the number of non-Saabs on the road rather than count the number of Saabs.
A few hours ago Brendan and I were sitting outside at a pizza place and a Saab 96 pulled up and parked across the road. And it seemed quite normal that it would do that.
Just prior to coming upstairs to write this I was sitting out front of my hotel, chatting with a couple of Englishmen, one of whom owns about 5 cars, including a Sonett III, and the other who has travelled here in a very nice 2-door 99. While we were sitting there we had two 900 Turbo S convertibles pass by and a two-stroke 96 (amongst many, many others).
This morning I thought about taking a picture of every Saab I see today, but there's no way I could post them all without crashing the machines that this site sits on.
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There seems to be an unusual tolerance here in Sweden for spitting. It's quite disturbing, actually. I'm starting to look for spitoons on the street corners so I can point them out to people.
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I did quite a bit of filming at the Saab museum today, which I'll edit and post in a few day's time. There's some incredible machinery in there, but the best thing about it is that there's a lot of normality to it, as well.
There's flaws. You almost feel like perhaps your car, or a car owned by someone you know, could take a place in there, and they could.
For example, the 99 Turbo that was shown at the Frankfurt Motor Show is there, and it has a tear in the leather on the front seat. What was even more charming is that it has a 99EMS badge on the dashboard, as the EMS was the sporty seller of the day and the turbo was largely seen as an extension of the EMS line back in the day.
There's a certain naivete and honesty in stuff like that and it makes the best of Saab seem within reach, but still quite excellent all the same.
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Today was a slower day due to the national public holiday here.
Tonight sees the beginning of what I understand is a bit of a Trollhattan summer tradition. On Wednesday nights all the car enthusiasts go down to the locks and just sit around showing off their cars in a sort of mutual admiration exercise.
I'll be taking plenty of pictures and posting them later on tonight.
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Here's a photo I forgot to post from the factory tour:
<blockquote>
</blockquote>
That's Christer Nilsson once again, and once again he's pointing to a sign.
That sign he's pointing to says something like "Unauthorised persons entering this room will be hung, drawn and quartered" - or something like that.
That door leads into a large-ish room within the factory, which Christer described as the pre-production area. That is, stuff they're working on that isn't ready for production yet (duh). I asked if this meant 2011 stuff, 2010 stuff - what timeframe are we talking about here? He answered that at the moment it's 2009 stuff.
I'll bet you all my house AND my dog that there was a Black Turbo in that room.
-----
You can tell it's really building up here.
It's now easier to count the number of non-Saabs on the road rather than count the number of Saabs.
A few hours ago Brendan and I were sitting outside at a pizza place and a Saab 96 pulled up and parked across the road. And it seemed quite normal that it would do that.
Just prior to coming upstairs to write this I was sitting out front of my hotel, chatting with a couple of Englishmen, one of whom owns about 5 cars, including a Sonett III, and the other who has travelled here in a very nice 2-door 99. While we were sitting there we had two 900 Turbo S convertibles pass by and a two-stroke 96 (amongst many, many others).
This morning I thought about taking a picture of every Saab I see today, but there's no way I could post them all without crashing the machines that this site sits on.
-----
There seems to be an unusual tolerance here in Sweden for spitting. It's quite disturbing, actually. I'm starting to look for spitoons on the street corners so I can point them out to people.
-----
I did quite a bit of filming at the Saab museum today, which I'll edit and post in a few day's time. There's some incredible machinery in there, but the best thing about it is that there's a lot of normality to it, as well.
There's flaws. You almost feel like perhaps your car, or a car owned by someone you know, could take a place in there, and they could.
For example, the 99 Turbo that was shown at the Frankfurt Motor Show is there, and it has a tear in the leather on the front seat. What was even more charming is that it has a 99EMS badge on the dashboard, as the EMS was the sporty seller of the day and the turbo was largely seen as an extension of the EMS line back in the day.
There's a certain naivete and honesty in stuff like that and it makes the best of Saab seem within reach, but still quite excellent all the same.
-----
Today was a slower day due to the national public holiday here.
Tonight sees the beginning of what I understand is a bit of a Trollhattan summer tradition. On Wednesday nights all the car enthusiasts go down to the locks and just sit around showing off their cars in a sort of mutual admiration exercise.
I'll be taking plenty of pictures and posting them later on tonight.
-----
Here's a photo I forgot to post from the factory tour:
<blockquote>
</blockquote>That's Christer Nilsson once again, and once again he's pointing to a sign.
That sign he's pointing to says something like "Unauthorised persons entering this room will be hung, drawn and quartered" - or something like that.
That door leads into a large-ish room within the factory, which Christer described as the pre-production area. That is, stuff they're working on that isn't ready for production yet (duh). I asked if this meant 2011 stuff, 2010 stuff - what timeframe are we talking about here? He answered that at the moment it's 2009 stuff.
I'll bet you all my house AND my dog that there was a Black Turbo in that room.
