My wife and I play a lot of backgammon. We used to record our backgammon scores in a book. Over time, those yearly books became a bit like an old family bible. The book for any given year would record events, aspirations, goals, achievements. At the start of 2005, one of my listed goals in the backgammon book for that year was to “Buy an old Porsche”.
I’m still waiting, though this week I came mighty close.
Porsche is one of those marques with a truly iconic vehicle in it’s history, a vehicle that’s surrounded by the rest of the cars that wear a Porsche badge. If you aspire to owning a Porsche, you usually aspire to owning a 911. The problem with that is that buying a 911 can be prohibitively expensive. Here in Australia, you won’t get much change out of $30,000 for an older 911 and that’s not even one of the more desirable ones. A 1980’s Carrera with the 3.2 engine and G50 gearbox will set you back at least $35,000 for a cheapie and even more for a good one.
I aspire to owning a Porsche. I’m a car guy and they make some truly outstanding sports cars. I’ve always enjoyed their commitment to excellence in what they do and I freely admit that I’d like to have one, one day. Like most people, however, I can’t afford a new Porsche so I’m going to have to fill my perceived P-car needs via some entry-level, second hand cars.
A lot of people who share my dilemma find 1980’s Porsches that aren’t 911s to be an affordable entry point. These were the first water-cooled Porsches. They saved the company, had wonderful handling and their styling still stands up to scrutiny today, but they’re still part of “the rest” of Porsche’s range and I’m fine with that.
One of my favourite Porsches from this era is the 928 (the other is the 944 Turbo). In a recent update on my search for a new car, I asked about whether or not it was possible to have fun with an automatic transmission. I also mentioned that I was considering a big V8 cruise-mobile for my next car and a few people in comments guessed that it might be the 928 I was considering.
I know that I’m getting older. Our bathroom mirror tells me so every morning. I have to remind the mirror that it shouldn’t gloat, because it’s always 30 minutes behind the message I get from my back when I get out of bed.
Despite my premature ageing, I’ve always been pretty young on the roads. I consider myself a Driver and from my experience, most Drivers are young in their road attitude (even if they’re also mature about it).
I wonder if I’m starting to age in this area, too, though.
Except for the 1986 Saab 900 Turbo I bought around 10 years ago, I’ve only ever owned cars with manual transmissions. I guess you could say I’ve also had a couple of automatic Saab 9000s, but they’ve actually belonged to Mrs Swade, so I’m not counting them as my own, even if I’ve spent a lot of time behind the wheel.
I’ve always felt that changing the gears yourself was essential to a true Driving experience. It’s part of the semi-organic connection between man and machine, part of being an automotive grown-up. There’s nothing quite like the feel of a good gearbox, the way it snicks into place and unleashes another rev band for you to explore. It really can make or break some cars.
The best feeling gearbox from a car that I’ve owned myself was in the Mazda MX-5. It’s a shame it didn’t have another 20hp or so to go with it, though the light chassis weight still made the car a lot of fun to drive.
The best feeling gearbox I’ve ever driven was in a Koenigsegg, but let’s keep it real, shall we?
The best feeling gearbox I’ve driven in a car that I’d ever have a chance of buying was in a Porsche 964, owned by my friend Mats, in Sweden. It really does have that rifle-bolt-action feeling and the car responds like the pedigree champion that it is.
As you know, I’m currently car-less. I’m looking at purchasing two cars this year, an everyday runabout and something more…. special…. for the weekends. The surprising thing for me is that for the first time in my life, I’m considering buying a car with an automatic transmission.
Today in Hobart, the Italian community put on their annual Festa Italia and the one car club I’m still a paid member of, Club Motori Italia, were asked to provide some Italian rolling stock to beautify the street. Although I don’t have an Italian car anymore, I figured it might be fun to go along, if only just to drool a little and take in the atmosphere with my Nikon.
Whenever I go to a car exhibition in Tasmania, there’s always at least one vehicle there that genuinely surprises me, simply for the fact that someone here has got one. I’ve been a few Italian car shows here, but I’ve never seen this SZ Zagato here before.
It’s one of only 998 ever built, hence my surprise that one would end up all the way down here (still in LHD, too). This one was locked up, so I couldn’t get much in the way of details. I did, however, photograph one of these at a car show in Trollhattan last summer so you can see a few more shots here.
That website work I mentioned a few days ago? It’s now online.
Over the last few weeks I’ve had the good fortune of being able to work with the guys from Koenigsegg on their new website, which went live last night. They’ve launched the new site as a prelude to them unveiling some new 2013 product at the Geneva Motor Show next month. I’m currently working on the ‘shop’ section of the site, which will go live next Thursday (some excellent clothing and lifestyle products there, too).
My job was to take their content and change the occasional bit of “Swenglish” into some easier-to-read English. We did the odd complete re-write in places as well. I did a similar job for Auto Motor and Sport magazine in Sweden a few months ago, a Porsche magazine they were preparing for iPad.
The work was very satisfying, something I’d love to do more of, although all this reading and writing about Porsches and Koenigseggs has given me quite a drooling problem!
Check out the all-new Koenigsegg.com. They make the world’s craziest, most beautiful and most brutal hypercars and it’s been an absolute privilege for me to work with them.
It’s not that often that three of my favourite things converge in such a significant way, but The Superbowl is just such an occasion, combining sports, cars and advertising in a way that few other events can.
I haven’t watched all of the car ads from the 2012 game yet. Unlike the locals, we Australians don’t get the ads in our broadcast of the big game. We have to scour the web to see what the various manufacturers are offering. Of the ads I have seen so far, the VW ad was a hit (I love dogs and Star Wars), and high-brow brother Audi’s vampire ad was pretty good, too. Hyundai overwhelmingly underwhelmed with the Turbo Veloster ad and to be honest, I found the reprise of Seinfeld (for Honda’s NSX, which is still a few years away), Motley Crue (for Kia) and Ferris Bueller (for the Honda CR-X) a bit tacky.
The biggest conversation hasn’t been about any of these, though, it’s been about the GM/Ford controversy regarding GM’s Silverado ad, shown below:
An average ad IMHO, but GM will come out as winners on this one because of Ford’s response.
If you haven’t heard about it yet, Ford wrote to NBC ‘demanding’ that the ad be pulled from the Superbowl broadcast. They also presented GM with a cease and desist with regard to commenting negatively about Ford durability. One Aussie newspaper even said they’re ready to sue over it.
All this whining has brought Ford into the Superbowl advertising headlines for all the wrong reasons. Yes, Ford has had the #1 selling vehicle in the US for the last millenium or so with the F150 and yes, they should defend their vehicle’s honor. But I’m not sure that spitting the dummy and acting like a crybaby is the way to go about it. GM’s Joel Ewanick found it all quite amusing, too:
“We stand by our claims in the commercial, that the Silverado is the most dependable, longest-lasting full-size pickup on the road,” said GM Global Chief Marketing Officer Joel Ewanick in a press release. “We can wait until the world ends, and if we need to, we will apologize. In the meantime, people who are really worried about the Mayan calendar coming true should buy a Silverado right away.”
Ford left themselves wide open for that one and Ewanick cleared the fences (please pardon my mixing of multiple sports metaphors).
So what should Ford do?
If I were them, I would have said something about it, but I’d have stopped well short of getting myself in the headlines due to having filled my nappy.
Instead, I’d have whipped my own ad team into action. GM left themselves slightly vulnerable by including a character not seen in the ad, a guy named Dave. Why not make the Silverado guys look misinformed and show Dave living the highlife in his F-150 while his buddies are battling toad plagues back in the wasteland?
Here’s a picture – The tail end of the GM ad is showing on a portable TV. Pan out to show Dave and his Mayan buddies enjoying a few brews at a tailgate party with some pumping music and some pimped out Mayan laydeeez adding some color in the background.
“Joke’s on you, boys…..”
I’m sure it could be made to look great and instead of coming across as a bunch of sookie-lala’s, Ford could take both the high road and the upper hand.
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Addendum….. Companies don’t just spend $3million per 30 seconds for Superbowl ad time. They also spend millions just making the ads themselves. They Jerry Seinfelds and Matthew Brodericks of the world don’t work for free, you know.
Fiat saved some money by not producing a new ad for the Superbowl. Instead, they just ran with what is undoubtedly the best car ad of 2011 – the ad for the 500 Abarth:
For the curious, here’s what she says:
What are you looking at, yeh!?
What are you looking at?
Are you undressing me with your eyes?
Poor guy… you can’t help it?
Is your heart beating?
Is your head spinning?
Do you feel lost thinking that I could be yours forever?
Today’s a travel day…. Lots of two-stroke fun here in Holland then off to England.
While I’m hooning about, I’ll leave you to ponder the magic that is a Koenigsegg brake disc. 400mm of pure stopping power and one of the two main reasons these beasts can go from zero to 300km/h and then back to zero again in just 21.19 seconds.
Yesterday was a busy day and a very enjoyable one. I’ll write more detailed notes on the visits at a later date, but there’s a summary below.
I guess the dominant feeling from this visit, aside from the happiness at being back here and seeing colleagues and friends again, is one of sadness. I’m coming to a better understanding of the personal loss that I’ll have in my own life by not being able to pursue my career with Saab here in Sweden. This job would have been fantastic and that’s a significant loss in itself, but more than that, there’s the friendships and experiences that I won’t get to build and share with people here.
Life back in Australia will be great, I know, but I’m really going to miss everything that Sweden had to offer PJ and I in terms of opportunities, experiences and friends. I guess it’s also making me more determined to make sure we do things back in Australia so we can live the way we want to, rather than the way circumstances might seem to dictate we have to.
Anyway, to yesterday’s activities…..
Visit with e-AAM
I called in on e-AAM to visit with Peter Johansson, a bloke I first met a few years ago back in Australia and the company’s vehicle integration manager. Peter’s the guy who made sure the XWD system that first appeared in the Saab 9-3 back in 2008 worked so well – the perfect guy to lead the vehicle integration efforts for e-AAM’s new eXWD system.
Their work has been affected by what’s happened to Saab, of course, but they continue to make progress and eXWD should indeed see life as a production component with interest from several companies already being nurtured. It shouldn’t be that far away, either.
When Peter’s not developing tomorrow’s technologies at the office, he’s in his private workshop building the car he’ll probably race from this summer in Sweden. We visited the workshop, too, and it was an amazing experience.
Peter’s the third generation of his family to work at Saab. His grandfather was one of the original 16 or so engineers who were there at the start of Saab’s automotive operations. His father, Sigge (who passed away very recently), was a legendary engineer at Saab and did some amazing things in the home workshop as well. Stuff like this:
That’s part of a compressor system (supercharger) for a Saab V4. Imagine that poking out the hood of your Saab 96 or Sonett 🙂
There’s plenty more from that visit, but that’ll do for now.
Museum Visit
I also called into the Saab Museum to collect the award that Saab gave me a few years ago.
I’ve always preferred the idea of the award staying with the museum, but with the recent threat to the museum’s continued existence, I thought I’d take the opportunity to bring it home. I can always return it to the museum if things work out OK.
On that front, I feel a bit more confident about the museum’s future after chats with people here in Trollhattan. There were a lot of bids for individual vehicles (the reports of around 500 bids are accurate, from what I hear) but also some bids for the entire museum operation, which is encouraging.
I guess the question for the bankruptcy administrators is do they risk scraping together a little more money from individual sales – with some bidders probably possibly having thrown ‘hail mary’ bids and the possibility of non-payment – or do they make what I’d see as the sensible decision and take a whole-of-operation bid that would not only protect the heritage and value of the collection, but also provide them with funds in one easy-to-administer and easy-to-collect transaction.
TTELA interview
The local newspaper, TTELA, got in touch with me and asked for a pow-wow, so I talked with them yesterday. Anna-Karin from TTELA was a trooper – the photographer wanted an outside photo so we did the interview as we walked the streets of Trollhattan, with her trying to write as we walked. Her hands must have come very close to freezing and falling off the end of her arms.
I don’t know when that interview will be published, but probably in the next day or so.
Dinner
Meals are always a highlight of this visit as they’re a chance to catch up with colleagues and friends. Last night was Mamma Mia’s lasagne and it was great, as always. The occasion also saw me sell my little red 900 and it’s great to know that it’s gone to a good home here in Trollhattan. I had some great times with that little car. Whilst it wasn’t worth much in financial terms, it was worth everything in terms of the freedom it gave me as a foreigner here in Sweden, and the fun times I had driving it around the countryside.
The recent opening of bids for the sale of cars at the Saab Museum has touched a few nerves with a lot of people, me included.
I’ve been fortunate enough to spend quite a bit of time at the Saab Museum in the last four years or so and there’s always been something fascinating there to look at, discover for the first time, or re-discover.
My first visit to the Saab Museum was back in 2007, when I came to the Saab Festival in Trollhattan. This video was shot during that first visit and it shows several things: 1) my relative newbie status as a Saab fan at that time, and 2) the absolutely gorgeous Saab 900 SVO Concept, the car that would form the basis for the Saab 9-3 Viggen.
I didn’t place any bids for cars at the Saab Museum, but if I did, this would have been one of the cars I’d have loved to secure.
