Saab gatherings Archives - Page 3 of 3

At the Saab Owners Club GB annual meet – part 1

Last weekend I had the distinct pleasure of attending the annual meetup of the Saab Owners Club of Great Britain. Th event was held at Haydock Park Racecourse at Merseyside and it was great to see so many beautiful Saabs in one place.

I’ve been the SOCGB national once before, in 2010. There were a few of the same cars as last year, but it was good to see quite a few different cars as well.

The oldies – click the image to enlarge.

Most of us in the enthusiast crowd are appreciators of the older Saab fleet and the English do attention-to-detail as well as anyone else out there in Saabland.

This Saab 95 was so clean – everywhere – that you could have eaten your dinner from any surface you liked (if the owner let you, which he wouldn’t).

Even the springs and hinges are painted and cleaned!

This is about as old-timer as it got last weekend – a Saab 92B. Like nearly every car at the show, it was pristine.

This early Saab 96 stroker caught a lot of attention with its bright red paint in the sunshine.

And I had to do a double-take at the interior. You’d think a guy who grew in Australia would be accustomed to right-hand-drive but I’m so used to seeing 96s in Sweden now that I had to look twice and figure it all out in my own head.

An image that harks back to a day when car companies sold cars with a range of real colors…..

….of course, if people bought cars in great numbers that were painted in something other than silver/black today then companies would produce more colors, but neither party seems willing to do so.

That first car in the row is a Saab 96 Souvenir edition, a limited model of just 150 units, sold in the UK in the late 1970s.

Some more fantastic Saab old-timers…… I love the minilite wheels on a Saab 96.

And this bright blue V4 was an eye-catcher not only for it’s paint….

An early Saab Sport……

And a 96 that’s done the rounds….. I guess it’s one of the blessings of being in a big club with proximity to the continent. Great people to see and great events in the warmer months.

This year’s Top Saab 99, a beautiful 1984 model, which I got to drive home!

This one had some very nice twin pipes at the back and sounded fantastic!

And finally – I got Sonett fever once again. Every time I’m close to these babies I just lose it. I spent a lot of time on the green one, chatting with the owner, etc. Absolutely beautiful and officially on my automotive bucket list.

I want to be in this picture one day…… it looks so “must drive”

One of only 258 ever made……. and gorgeous!

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I’ll have more from the Saab Owners Club GB annual event coming soon…..

Events: Saab Owners Club GB annual event

It’s a little late for posting to the events page, but later today I’ll be jumping on a plane to head off to England.

Part of my weekend visit will include a couple of days at the Saab Owners Club GB annual gathering, being held this year at Haydock Park. All the info is available at the club website. If you’re in the area then I’m sure they’d love for you to drop by, say hello and maybe have a cup of tea!

There will be all the cars, of course, but there will also be parts sales, show-n-shine and all the other usual events that accompany a big nationwide event. Personally speaking, I’ll be spending a lot of my weekend trying to steal either Peter’s Sonett II or Chris’ 99Turbo and then heading for the chunnel.

Last year’s event in Bath….

I was fortunate enough to spend a day at last year’s event as well, in Bath, and am looking forward to a return visit this year.

I’ll have plenty of pics from the event and hopefully a few stories to tell, as well.

Naturally, if there’s any urgent breaking news (i.e. the official kind) then I’ll be updating the site as soon as possible. Griffin up!

Event: Swedish Car Day XII

I’m very sad to pass on to you all that I won’t be able to attend either the Saab Owners Convention, nor Swedish Car Day, this year. Inside Saab isn’t immune from Saab’s current circumstances, so I’ll have to content myself with doing such things next year.

I attended Swedish Car Day in 2010 and I can tell you it’s one of the best events I’ve had the good fortune to be at. Boston is just a brilliant city and the work that Village Auto Group put into this event is amazing. Just check out the setting, for starters!

If you can get to this event, I strongly urge you to do so. You will absolutely love it.

This has been added to the Inside Saab events page.

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When: 28 August 2011
Where: Larz Anderson Auto Museum, Brookline, Massachusetts, USA
Website: http://www.facebook.com/swedishcarday

What: Sponsored by Charles River Saab, and its sister stores Boston Volvo Village and Volvo Village of Norwell, Swedish Car Day brings together Saab and Volvo owners together every year on the lawns of the gracious Larz Anderson Auto Museum. The event will feature over two hundred cars displayed on the lawn, and we can reliably expect that two-thirds will be Saabs. There will be cars of every vintage, some pristine, some well seasoned, and a number of modified examples as well. There will be a raffle, awards for displayed cars as chosen by the attendees, a parts tent, specialty vendors, guest speakers and for the first time, live music! Don’t forget to tour the museum’s collection!

As a warm-up for Swedish Car Day, on 27 August 2011 we will see the return of the Swedish Car Day Rally. This will be a scavenger rally, and the theme will be Greater Boston Parks and Gardens. The rally will finish at Charles River Saab and we will have an early evening barbecue and gathering for all Swedish Car Day enthusiasts to catch up with old friends and get geared up for the main event.

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A couple of my photos from last year (it was HOT! and the weather was pretty warm, too)

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Events – IntSaab 2011, Finland

This event has been added to the events page.

IntSaab is the annual International Saab Clubs meet, which is hosted in a different country each year. Although it mentions Saab Clubs in the official title, you do not need to be a member of a Saab Club to attend. IntSaab is open to all.

Well, almost. IntSaab 2011 is fully booked, such is the popularity of the event. For those who are interested in attending an IntSaab meeting in future years, however, here’s a run-down of what will be happening this year……

IntSaab 2011 is being hosted by the Saab Club of Finland. The main center of events will be at the Hotel Ellivuori, in Sastamala. The official IntSaab program runs from August 5-8, 2011.

The program for this year’s event also includes a pre-tour from August 3 to 5, which will start at Espoo Car Museum near Helsinki and finish in Uusikaupunki with a visit to the SAAB Museum. Participants will then head for Ellivuori in time for the official IntSaab proceedings.

The official IntSaab program for 2011 is as follows…..

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Friday, Aug. 5 2011
Afternoon:
Arrival formalities and registration.
Arrival of the pre tour participants.

Evening:
Presentation: Hannu Berger, “History Of The Uusikaupunki Car Factory”
Presentation: Simo Lampinen, “Flying Finn”
Get together around the BBQ.

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Saturday, Aug. 6 2011
Morning:
Breakfast served at the hotel for all participants.
Registration continues.
An 80km long Saab pick nick tour with quizzes and tasks.
The picknick tour includes a pause at the Nokian Tyres warehouse, where a soup lunch and a factory tour will be availlable, as well as a show by Saab Performance Team.

Afternoon:
A non-prepaid lunch at Ellivuori will be served.
Parts sales.
Beauty contest.
Normal sauna and traditional Finnish smoke sauna.
Swimming pool and possibility to swim in the lake.

Evening:
Anniversary dinner with program.

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Sunday, Aug. 7 2011
Morning:
Breakfast at the hotel for all participants.
Part sales.

Afternoon:
Lunch with price giving continued from the previous night.
“Goodbye and get safely home!”

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I’m planning on being there in Finland for this years’ event and I can’t wait. It’s been a Saab event I’ve wanted to attend for a long time now.

I’ll be bringing you all the coverage I can. Hopefully it might inspire you to get to an IntSaab event one day, too. Saab gatherings like this one are always heaps of fun, with plenty of great people to meet and a smorgasboard of incredible Swedish (and Finnish!) machinery to drool over.

For those who like to do a lot of forward planning, IntSaab 2012 will be held at Spa, in Belgium.

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Mouthwatering Saab Club meeting in Hong Kong

Back in January 2010 there were a lot of gatherings around the world held in support of Saab as the company was threatened with closure by General Motors. The website that I used to run, Saabs United, was a central gathering point for the exchange of information about those convoys and it was a tremendous success.

I remember sitting at home watching the news flood my inbox as each of the convoys was held. You could almost track the movement of the sun by the email titles. I wasn’t surprised to see a huge gathering in Trollhattan, nor representation in Germany, France, the US and England. These were all markets I knew about.

What did surprise me, however, was the passion exhibited from Saab fans in Asia. The number of people and the incredible quality and condition of the vehicles they owned. I’ve talked to a few Saab tuning companies in my time and more than one has told me that their best and most fanatical customers are in Asia.

So it’s no surprise, then, that the following photo gallery from Hong Kong includes some fantastic Saabs. The event was held last weekend and I received the following review from Kenson Chan, part of the authorised dealer group in Hong Kong.

On June 5 (Sunday), the Saab Club HK gathered around 30 Saabs at a scenic place called Whitehead Club. Whitehead Club is just next to Sai Kung — the “Leisure Garden of Hong Kong” and has long been one of the most beautiful places in Hong Kong.

On that day, we were invited to join the gathering and we brought a new Saab 9-5 Aero and a 9-5 Vector to the venue. All members were happy to see the new Saab 9-5 and we also arranged test-drive session for them.

During the gathering, members showed their 900 Convertible and 9-3 Viggen to the media. Some members even tuned their cars on the day! At the end of the gathering, all members were given Saab Expression souvenir.

Sounds like a great club gathering and from the pictures, I think you’ll agree that Sai Kung is one of the most beautiful places in Hong Kong. What a setting!

My thanks to Kenson for the images and information, and congratulations to the Saab Club of Hong Kong on what looks like a wonderful outing.

Click the images to enlarge.

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Saabs @ Carlisle 2011

One of the bigger Saab events on the North America calendar is the annual Carlisle Import and Kit Nationals. In Saab circles, it’s known as Saabs @ Carlisle and it was on again last weekend at the Carlisle Fairgrounds in Pennsylvania.

Organisers of the Saab effort were hoping to top the magic 300 mark this year. They fell agonisingly close, with around 275 Saabs in attendance, plus some cars from the Saab Heritage Collection in the US and dealer demo vehicles. Given the rate of growth and interest in the event, I’m sure they’ll get to the 300 mark next year, and I’d love to bring Inside Saab along to record the occasion.

All manner of Saabs drove to the event from 22 different states. A good friend of mine, Jim Coggenshall, was there and he sent me this report from the event:

Saab had at least twice as many cars as any other make a the Show. Audi, Volvo, BMW and Opel were all very well represented but less than half the number of Saabs. Other interesting groups included Simca, Lancia, Datsun, & Citroen but there were literally hundreds of other imports and kit cars (Ferrari, Lambo, GTR, etc).

The vast majority of the Saabs arrived (often in multi car convoys) in time for the Friday night BYO cook-out. A fair number of folks (including myself) camped right at the fair grounds. It was a great way to meet up with old friends and share a little late night revelry without having to worry about driving.

Saturday morning dawned as a beautiful day. A nice change for the North East US, which has had the most widespread wet spring anybody can remember. Sunscreen was in order. It was very easy to tell who forgot theirs on Sunday!

The Central Pennsylvania Saab Club had set up a 200 foot long tent as the central gathering spot. It not only was the area for provided meals, it also housed the Heritage Collection brough along by Saab Cars North America. What a stunning display. Chip Lamb of West of Sweden spent a fair bit of the day Saturday firing up nearly all the cars. On Sunday, at least three of them were taken out from under the tent for a few laps around the roads of the fair grounds. Nothing turned more heads or ears all weekend than when Chip took the two stroke Quantum racer for a slow but noisy joy ride around the entire fairgrounds.

All the Saab participants filled out People’s Choice ballots in at least 12 different classes. Nice plaques were awarded for 1,2,& 3 in each class. A pleasant surprise was the participation of the Saabaru folks with nearly a dozen cars (Saab 9-2x’s). I’m told the true Subaru folks don’t like them and they sometimes get sideways looks from the true Saab folks. But they love to drive their 9-2x’s and it was great to see some of their really well cared for cars.

The organizers also invited “friends of Saab” to participate, and they were represented by everything from a DeLorean to an old RWD Jeep somehow mated to a Saab B234 (I’m told it was seen doing wheelies).

After lunch at least three different groups went out for loosely organized cruises through the beautiful Pennsylvania farmland and up into the hills around Carlisle. Others visited the rows and rows of vendor tents to score some elusive parts for their cars or just some other memorabilia from the weekend. Then it was back to the fairgrounds for another good meal.

After dark the big transporter that brought much of the Heritage Collection was pulled up beside the huge tent. A big screen placed on the side of it for movie night which consisted of a selection of the best episodes of Top Gear. By midnight most people turned in (except, it seems, those around my tent).

On Sunday things were a bit quieter. Many of the other show participants seemed to focus only on Saturday, but not Saab. A good 75% of the cars were back for the showing of the colors. We arranged the cars by color instead of model and had another judging (what’s with only three white cars?). Those awards were presented during the lunch which closed out the three day weekend. A great time was had by all.

To some photos, then……

I should give the honor of the first image to Jim himself, as he rode to Carlisle (a 900-mile round trip) in his Saab Sonett III, which is no small feat for a tall man.

You can all of Jim’s images from Carlisle here.

The following images are from Meg Haviland, who travelled to the show from New York. You can see all of Meg’s images

here.

That last one’s an interesting one. I’ve had a couple of people include tales of getting woken up by “that darn orange Saab” in their emails about Carlisle this year.

If you’re wondering how such a sweet little car could do that to so many people, maybe this will give you an idea….. 🙂

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Another Saab mashup on the streets

It’s always interesting to see what sort of Saab-related oddities are out there in the world.

Last week it was the SaabViper making big waves on the internet – a Saab 9-3 SportCombi with a Dodge Viper engine.

This week, it’s something quite different……

It seems this Jeep CJ5 is the latest Saab mashup to get noticed. The car appeared at the Carlisle Import and Kit Nationals event staged last weekend in Pennsylvania. It’s a big gathering of vehicles from all around the United States and Saab always has a massive presence there.

Visitors to this year’s Carlisle show might have been a bit puzzled when they saw the Jeep parked amongst all the Swedish metal. All was made clear, though, when they looked under the hood.

From a little reading around the web, it seems the owner of the vehicle had a Jeep with no working engine, and a Saab engine laying around without a body. Why not bring them together?

The engine is a 2.3turbo and the Jeep is rear-wheel-drive.

My thanks to Mark M and Jim C for the images. More can be seen over at Thor’s Saabs @ Carlisle pages.

We’ll have more from Saabs @ Carlisle later. It looks like people had a great time there.

Saabs United Days a success

I got back from Australia in to Trollhattan on Saturday evening, just in time to take in Day 2 of the Saabs United Days event on the weekend.

Saabs United Days was a gathering organised by the Saabs United website, aimed at giving a chance for readers of the website to get together, share some Saab experiences and attend various presentations to give them a better understanding of the Saab company and brand.

Day 1 was conducted mostly at ANA, which is arguably the largest and most trafficked Saab dealership in the world, located right here in Trollhattan (the new Saab of North Olmstead showroom in the US might be the single point of argument about size).

There were plenty of new Saabs to test drive. All variations of the new Saab 9-5 were on offer so that people who’d previously not had a chance could get to sample the new Saab 9-5 Sedan range. Attendees also got an exclusive small-setting opportunity to spend some significant time with the new Saab 9-5 SportCombi and the new Saab 9-4x, neither of which are released to world markets just yet.

Reports say that a number of vehicles were sold at ANA on the weekend, which is a great outcome for both ANA and Saabs United.

I joined the group for Day 2 of the event, which was hosted at the Saab Museum in Trollhattan. Aside from the opportunity to check out the various historical Saabs in display (with free entry for SU Days attendees), there were also a couple of presentations made giving people an insight into how Saab operates as a company.

A team from the Saab Technical Development center presented on how Saab use modelling and simulation to enhance the model development process. Everything from design to supply and even safety is enhanced by Saab’s greater use of modelling techniques. In fact, where Saab used to build mules every six months to test a generational change in the development cycle of vehicle, they can now test significant changes to development vehicles every six weeks using computer simulations.

This presentation also included a segment about the Saab IQon vehicle entertainment and integration system. The IQon system drew a great amount of interest at the Geneva Salon when it was unveiled earlier this year and that interest level hasn’t dropped off at all, with plenty of questions in the group Q&A session that followed being about IQon in particular.

The second presenation addressed Saab’s production facility – how Saab actually goes about making cars. We had a photographic tour around the factory, as well as some detailed insights into how Saab use ‘Lean’ production methods to constantly improve their production process. It was a very intensive presentation and one for the real Saab die-hards, but an incredibly interesting perspective nonetheless.

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I’ve been writing about the Saab company for over six years now, until recently that was on the Saabs United website. One of the great aspects about Saab is the community that surrounds it – a very dedicated and passionate group of people who want to know more about Saab and why we do the things we do.

It’s easy to think of this gathering as being just a group of car nuts, but the fact that people were willing to travel from England, Finland and Holland to attend something organised by other fans just like them is indicative of the passion people have for the company.

I’d have to rate the first Saabs United Days an outstanding success. The fact that people are willing to organise and attend such an event is something that we at Saab really appreciate. It’s also a feather in the cap of the organisers and attendees, the people who are always needed to make such an event a success.

If you’ve got an event like this happening in your local area, please do contact me so that I can add it to the Events page on this site. I might even be able to get along and say Hi if the schedule works!

Photos by Rune at Saabs United. Used by permission.

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Events – Saabs United Days and Saabs @ Carlisle

THere are a number of Saab enthusiast events coming up to start the northern spring/summer Saabing season. Here are some details on a couple that you may want to attend if they’re in your neck of the woods.

Swedish Day UK (late addition)

When: 8th May (tomorrow, as I site here writing this)
Where: Haynes International Motor Museum, Sparkford

It’s a little late to post this one, but it’s turned into a wonderful annual event and if you’re in the UK and at a loose end on Sunday, then I can highly recommend you get along to Sparkford and say hello.

Full information on the event: Swedish Day UK

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SaabsUnited Days

When: 14-15th May
Where: Trollhattan, Sweden.

What: SaabsUnited Days is a get together for anyone who loves Saabs, particularly those who are regular readers of the Saabs United website. Saabs United has partnered with ANA, the Saab dealership in Trollhattan, to offer a range of activities and special offers. You’ll get to see the Saab 9-4x and Saab 9-5 SportCombi, as well as whole heap of other stuff. There’s free admission to the Saab Museum on Sunday 15th, too.

I’ll be back in Sweden on the 14th and will be doing my best to catch up with everyone in attendance in Trollhattan on the Saturday night. If all goes well, I should have a little personal surprise in store, too.

Click here for the full details about SaabsUnited Days.

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Saabs @ Carlisle

When: 20th-22nd May
Where: Carlisle Fairgrounds, PA.

What: The Carlisle Import and Kit Nationals are on every year, and every year, the event gets taken over by upwards of 200 Saabs from around the north-eastern United States. It’s typically amongst the single largest gathering of Saabs each year in the one place (and quite often the largest).

Pre-registration is now closed, but that doesn’t mean the event is closed. There will be a number of “Caravans” leaving from different locations to attend Carlisle and Saab fans heading to the event are encouraged to join in and increase the presence. I’ll bring more information about the various caravans as that information comes to hand (I’m waiting on details from one of the caravan convenors. If you know of a caravan that’s leaving, please let me know and I’ll add it to the update on this post).

Carlisle isn’t just a Saab event, of course, and there’s something there to capture everyone’s automotive imagination….

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