First things first – I’m looking forward to seeing some photos from France today, as French Saab fans gather in Paris in a show of support for the company.
This is an initiative of Saab France as well as supporter websites, Saab Actu, Saablog-In and saabsunited.fr. It’s wonderful to see gestures of support like this, done the right way.
I know from a few messages here and there that some other gatherings were in the planning stages and if they do end up happening, please do let me know. I’d be happy to pass the word around so that interested parties can attend.
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Moving north…….
I got a message from a Belgian Saab fan overnight, about the Saab 9-5 SportCombi and Saab 9-4x being shown at his local dealership yesterday.
At this point, I don’t know how long it’s going to be there, nor where else it might be showing. I’ll try and find out some more information as to whether or not there’s a Belgian Tour going on (you’ll recall there was a break scheduled in the middle of the Spanish Tour).
For today, however, the vehicles are at Saab Kegels Turnhout. The address is Ambachtstraat 3, Oud-Turnhout, Belgium.
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These guys have been trying to get this Saab 9-3 into the Swedish Touring Car Championship for a couple of years now. It seems they’re working again with the hope of getting things going for the 2012 STCC season.
I really wish them every success. It’d be great to see Saabs racing again.
Amongst the set are some absolutely wonderful images of Saab 96s competing in the event.
Great stuff.
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And last, but by no means least, I’d like to thank everyone who commented on the “Why I want Saab to survive” post here, over the last few days.
I’m going to pass those responses on to our communications people in Sweden and make sure that all employees are able to see your thoughts. They were very encouraging and a testament to the work that’s been done in Trollhattan over the years.
I wrote about Bertil’s experience at Bonneville Speed Week last week. Bertil set a new record in the J-PRO class in his two-stroke Saab 96. Bertil wasn’t the only person running a Saab at Bonneville this year. He wasn’t the only guy to set a new land speed record in a Saab, either.
Tom Donney was there, too, with his two-stroke Saab Sonett II. Tom’s name will be familiar to many. He’s collected classic Saabs for years and runs a specialist transmission workshop and vehicle sales operation from his base in Fort Dodge, Iowa. And if you’re good with names, you might remember that Jay Leno bought the Saab 92 in his famed car collection from a guy named Tom Donney. Yeah, same guy.
Tom caught the Bonneville Bug last year, when he went to speed week as an observer and saw a number of Saabs on the salt. Tired of some frustrating outcomes in dirt racing, Tom and his team figured it was time to get their name in the record books. I can highly recommend you read Tom’s 2010 Bonneville background piece, before proceeding on to this year’s run, below.
Tom’s Sonett was running in the J-GT class. Here’s his story, in his own words and pictures.
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Bonneville 2011
Our team – myself, Steve Davis and Verlyn Gregerson – set out to break a old records set by Dick Cartron and his team in 1963 & 1964…..and to establish a new Land Speed Record in a two stroke Saab….. Dick set a personal best time of 103.560mph in 1963, and a Land Speed Record 105.453mph in 1964.
We arrived Friday am and began the long task of getting our car, a part 1967/1968 Saab Sonett II, loaded with a 750cc two stroke motor, (our car must run as a 1968 to met the required 500 car production) through the safety inspections so we could run on the Salt Flats. We worked on the car till Sunday afternoon and finally had all in order and made a required “Rookie” run to be sure me and the car was safe for the Salt.
We made two runs Sunday late afternoon that were about 95+ MPH and from there we started to dial in our Saab two stroke.
The current, 2011 Land Speed Record we were chasing was 96.683mph and was bumped to 96.877 on Sunday by a 1959 Deutsch Bonnet named Bone Evil! with a 2 cylinder 750cc motor
We met the owner, Mark Brinker and his crew and we all decided….NOW WE HAVE A RACE! They were a good team from Houston Texas.
On our first run Monday morning we ran a blistering 100.458mph which surpassed the old record of 96.683mph, which landed us with a date with History the next morning for our second “backup” run. At Bonneville you must run “down and back”, on two separate days, then if your average of the two runs exceeds the existing record, you now own a new record.
On Tuesday AM we ran a conservative run of 97.479 to give us the new land speed record of 98.968MPH.
Right: Tom with the new 98mph record…..
But success never sleeps. We quickly swapped out the cylinder head to an experimental one we made with a much higher compression ratio and pealed off a run of 101.653mph later that morning! Back to impound and a new attempt to “bump” our record on Wednesday am.
Wednesday AM we made so more mods and smoked all the old records by going 109.574,mph for a new land speed record of 105.613mph!
More mods and back on the track…..next run that afternoon gave us a run of 108.671mph! Another recorded beater was in order for Thursday am for our “backup” run.
Thursday AM we ran 106.215mph and said good enough……we now had set the land speed record THREE times! And our last one was 107.443mph.
Right: 109 mph in a two-stroke Sonett…..
We spent the rest of Thursday swapping out playing with a larger “prototype motor” and got up to 112.538mph for a max speed. With that we packed and headed home with our green little Saab and with all the goals we had set out to accomplish.
On a final note, Lots of people came up to me to say they loved the Saab that we had, and Saab as a company, and that they wished Saab well. People always ask me which is the “Best Saab Ever Made”? My answer is always the same…..”the last one off the assembly line!”
Today, as back in 1963 and 1967, Saab makes a great car…..go out and buy one and do what they are meant to do…..BE DRIVEN!”
This is pretty exciting stuff for a Saab nut. I’m always keen to see how people run their older Saabs and it always puts a smile on my face when I see something like this.
My first correspondence with Bertil Sollenskog was last year (2010), when he had a failed first attempt at Bonneville. He had some mechanical issues last year that couldn’t be sorted out at the flats themselves, so he brought the car home to fight another day. He wasn’t discouraged, however. Having been told that it usually takes at least two failed attempts before people can get close to a record, Bertil vowed to himself that the second time would be charm.
And so it was.
Bertil is an expat Swede living in the US and he runs his own engine-building company, preparing competition engines for various VW and Toyota racing formulas.
He saw a Saab Monte Carlo for sale 4 or 5 years ago, bought it, and has been playing with it ever since. After helping out a friend at Bonneville Speed Week in 2007, Bertil got the speed bug and decided it was time to make the Monte Carlo sing for its supper.
Last year’s run might have failed to produce a record, but it did a lot to teach Bertil about the harsh conditions on the flats and how well prepared you need to be in order to have a realistic chance of setting a record there. Consequently, Bertil took a team of five along to the flats this year, as well as two engines.
I’ll let him take up the story:
About 400 cars and 100 motorcycles come to Speedweek every year, representing many different classes. My 1966 Saab Monte Carlo is entered in class JPRO, which means it has to be stock on the outside and modified for safety on the inside. Engine tuning is “free”, but all basic engine parts must be from the Saab family.
The engine is 750 cc, water-cooled, 3 cylinder and 2 stroke. It is now tuned to 97 hp at 6500 rpm. (The standard is 52 hp at 4500rpm.)
The salt flats are unique, with temperatures up to 110 F, humidity down to 11% and altitude of 4500 ft. This makes it difficult to adjust the fuel mixture properly ahead of the time trials! Luckily there is up to 2 hours wait between runs, which allows for adjusting.
After many runs, never breaking 100 mph, the first engine melted a piston. The second engine was installed and modifications were made on the car (i.e. lowering the ride height).
After several more runs and tweaking, the Saab averaged 107.5mph on two runs with a flying start. The previous record of 103.9 mph was broken! I thought the engine could produce more, so we kept on trying. Ultimately, we reached 110 mph, our final record for 2011 Speedweek.
Bertil already has plans for a return with a faster car next year. The engine is strong enough, but gearbox and suspension modifications are in the works.
Note – the salt flat photos below are from this year, but the engine and interior photos are from 2010 and the engine is his ‘street’ engine with three downdraft carbs. The engine used at the flats has three side-draft carbs and delivers 20hp more than the street engine.
Following is a video from the historic class, the flat-out version of the rally that doesn’t feature quite so many Saabs, but does feature a lot of action.
Enjoy your viewing.
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My apologies to a few of the Saab drivers that I missed. My camera was running so low on battery power towards the end that I was turning it off between cars. Sometimes it didn’t start up again quickly enough. There were at least two Saabs that I missed – a 99T and one or more 96’s.
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Going to the Midnight Sun Rally was a ton of fun. You’d need to be well organised to get to spectator points on a number of different stages, but once you’re there it really is like old-time racing.
People spill out and walk along the track in between cars. They’re gathered on the hills, some of them having picnics.
And then there’s the driving, which as you can see is pretty exciting stuff. Many of Sweden’s top drivers were there, including Kenneth Backlund from the Saab Performance Team, former Saab champ Stig Blomqvist as well as eventual winner, Kenny Bräck.
If you have an opportunity to get along to one of these historic rallies in the future, I recommend that you do. You’ll see some outstanding machinery, some ace driving and you’ll have a whole lot of fun doing it.
The 2011 Midnight Sun Rally ended just over a week ago and there were a lot of Saabs entered in the event. If you haven’t seen the Midnight Sun Rally photo album yet, then make sure you click on that link and check it out.
Most of the Saabs at the event competed in the Regularity Class. This is not full-tilt rally driving as you might know it. Regularity, as the name suggests, is all about driving to a regular schedule and being consistent in that. In the case of the Midnight Sun Rally, this meant driving to achieve an average of 50km/h over every stage of the event. Cars incur penalties for being outside the 50km/h average target.
This video shows most of the Saabs competing in Regularity this year. Because I was filming on some longer, straighter sections, this is more like a chance to see and appreciate the vehicles than to see some sideways action (that’s coming in another video a bit later!). Regularity is more about teamwork and precision than it is about flat out speed. It’s also less expensive than flat-out rallying, allowing greater access to a wider group of people.
Enjoy the cars! You’ll see a great range of Saabs here from the Saab 92 right through to late model Saab 99s (entries in the rally have to be at least 30 years old).
I’ve got a swag of photos from the Midnight Sun Rally, held around Västerås last weekend. I don’t have any of the cars on the dirt, though. I only shot video there, which I’ll post very soon. These stills were taken at Rally HQ in Västerås, where the cars would assemble at the end of each day.
I’m not sure if I got everyone, but I got a lot of them! Here’s a selective collection of larger images, with a more complete gallery below. Click to enlarge.
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This blue 99Turbo is the latest car built by the Saabs United Historic Rally Team. It’s a replica of Stig Blomqvist’s 1981 car from the Swedish Rally.
Many of you heard that would-be Saab investor Vladimir Antonov was entered for the race, which would have been the second year in a row for him. This is the team he would have driven in.
The three cars were prepared by Historic Rally Racing Service in a record time of just three months. All three cars feature sports suspension but are running non-turbo, single-carb engines. There’s scope for more performance in them, but for this build (in this timeframe), reliability was the goal. Also, competing in regularity, reliability is more crucial than performance.
The insides of one the cars, complete with chequered flag trim 🙂
Mr Antonov’s place was taken by a friend, Alex Fogilev and the Saab Museum’s Peter Backstrom was drafted in as co-driver.
This Sonett II certainly looked (and sounded) the part. I’ve always wondered why there aren’t more of these in historic rallying, but I guess their relative rarity and fibreglass bodies might have something to do with it. Should still be good for regularity class, though.
Lasse and Sibylla have competed in the last four Midnight Sun rallies. They always compete in period costume. The regularity class is at relatively slow speeds and there is no requirement for racing suits or excessive safety modifications (which is why they can carry suitcases on the roofracks and dolls as passengers in the back seat!). This is the first Midnight Sun they haven’t finished, suffering with a broken driveshaft on the final day.
This early Saab 96 was one of the most immaculate racing vehicles I’ve ever seen. You could eat your dinner off any surface you looked at. Incredible.
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Below is a larger gallery, featuring all the photos above and a bunch more (a few non-Saabs, too. How often do you get to see not one, but two Lancia Stratos?)
Click to enlarge.
Coming soon we will have some video of the Saabs in regularity class, plus all the other vehicles (and a few Saabs too) in the full-tilt historic class.
I just wanted to post a quick note on the new wheels in the parking lot tonight.
This is my chariot for the next few days……. click
It’s a Saab 9-4x Aero – 2.8T V6 with XWD – and I’ll be taking it up to Västerås tomorrow for a few days of action at the Midnight Sun rally.
I’ll be arriving in the afternoon and taking in all the final day’s action, checking out all the Saabs in play and of course, sharing plenty of photos and maybe some video here in Inside Saab.
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Mrs Swade and I took the 9-4x out for a nice leisurely drive this evening, taking one of the back roads out of Trollhattan towards Lilla Edet. It’s a winding, uneven surface and in the rain, there’s plenty of reason to be cautious (which I was). The 9-4x was totally planted, however, and didn’t miss a beat. It was an incredibly encouraging first run, even if just a short one.
The difference between Sport and Comfort modes is a marked one, as it should be. Comfort soaked up all the road’s uneven surfaces quite nicely and Sport turned it (surprisingly) aggressive. A real Jeckyl and Hyde, this one – in a good way. Those two modes should be different, otherwise why have them?
Can’t wait to get it out on the open road tomorrow. I’ve got my wife here, an iPod, a Saab 9-4x and 300+km of roads to travel. What more could you ask for?
Saab will be present at the 2011 Midnight Sun Rally, to be held in the Västerås municipality, around 50km northwest of Stockholm. The rally runs from July 13 to 16.
The Midnattssolsrallyt is organised by KAK, the Swedish Automobile Club and is the prime event on the historic rallying calendar in Sweden, a racing segment with a huge following here and elsewhere in Europe.
The Midnight Sun Rally will feature a lot of Saabs this year, and Saab have been prominent in the race’s history, too. The race was first run in 1950 and Saab’s first victory was nine years later, with Erik Carlsson at the wheel of a Saab 93. It ran until 1964, when it changed name to The Swedish Rally and became part of the World Rally Championship. Again, Saabs were prominent in the post 1964-era up until 1980 with Ake Akersson, Per Eklund and Stig Blomqvist having plenty of success.
In 2006, the Midattssolsrallyt name came alive once again, but as an historic rally. This year, only vehicles made before 1982 are permitted entry into the rally.
I’ll be at this year’s rally and will bring you all the Saaby action as quickly and as often as I can. It should be an absolute blast!
Here are a few photos from last year’s rally, which had an overnight stop in Trollhattan during the 2010 Saab Festival. The Saab 99Turbos seen in these pictures belong to the Saabs United Historic Rally Team. Click to enlarge.
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This has been added to the Events page. There’s a lot going on and Inside Saab will be there to see it all. And there are even more events still to be added.
If you’re going to be at one of them, make sure you come up and say hello.
And if you’ve got an event happening that I might be able to attend for Inside Saab, please do let me know. There are no guarantees, but hopefully I can get there, share some Saaby good times and tell some Saaby good stories here on the website as well.
A few days ago, I posted an article here on Inside Saab, written by a friend of mine in Boston named Pierre Belperron (a guy I’ve previously referred to as “the second-hardest working man in all Saabdom” due to his diligent work as Service Manager at Charles River Saab). The article was called Bare Naked Saabing (highly recommended reading) and the subject of the article was a hillclimb project car built by two of Pierre’s sons, Pascal and Marcel.
The car, a Saab 900, was finally used for it’s new purpose on the weekend in a hillclimb event called Climb to the Clouds. Here it is, being driven by Pascal. It looks like a good run, especially for a first up event for a car that’s just been completed.
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I have a very personal love for watching Saabs participating in motorsport events. As many of you know, Saab built their reputation in the 1950s, 60s and 70s on the back of multiple rallying successes, back before rallying turned into a mega-budget event.
Today, old Saabs are riding a wave of popularity in Sweden and other parts of Europe as historic rallying gains more and more prominence around the continent.
Later next month we will cover the Midnight Sun rally in Sweden, where there are dozens of historic Saabs entered in the event. It’s going to be an absolute blast.
Congratulations to Pascal and Marcel (and team) for their efforts at Mt Washington last weekend!
A good friend of mine named Pierre Belperron works at Charles River Saab, one of the top Saab dealers in the US. Occasionally, Pierre also writes articles on their company blog.
I post a collection of notable reading in a weekly post here at Inside Saab that I call Saabosphere. This article was so good that I asked Pierre’s permission to post it here in full.
The article arose because two of Pierre’s sons, Marcel and Pascal, have just finished building a Saab rally car that they’ll run in a hillclumb event this weekend in the US.
I hope you enjoy Pierre’s article as much as I did. If you could ‘bottle’ the essence of being a Saab nut into one article, this is pretty close to what you might write. Make sure you bookmark the CRSaablog – it’s well worth reading.
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I am, by nature and training, a deconstructionist. I enjoy the intellectual rigor of examining a situation, problem or thing and dissecting it into its component parts. This is helpful when one is not overly bright, for it affords me the ability to analyze situations I would otherwise find baffling. Much of my time at conservatory was spent doing this sort of analysis, on both music (I am one of those few freaks who actually enjoyed music theory and analysis and took every course I could) and performance at the instrument. People of immense talent and genius do not do this; they don’t have to.
When assessing the driving experience of a car, there is, of course, how said car feels in total. This is very important. I also like to look past that and gauge my reaction to the various systems. However, as cars have become more integrated, more digital, more “of a piece,” this has become increasingly challenging. Thus it was with great analytical interest that I approached my first drives in the newly unleashed 1985 Saab SPG Hillclimb car built by sons Marcel and Pascal for the Climb to the Clouds race at Mount Washington.
Construction of this car essentially involved stripping it to a shell, throwing away everything that doesn’t contribute to making the car go, stop or corner, and then putting it back together again. Sunroof? Gone. Power windows? Gone. Stereo, comfy seats, heater, AC, insulation, door panels and cruise control? All gone. After being taken to the car’s essence, there are some additions: this is a race car, not an exercise in automotive asceticism. Hence, better suspension, lots of go fast stuff on the engine, racing seats and a full roll cage are fitted. Is it like driving a 900? Unmistakably.
While the ignition key assembly between the seats is gone, the array of switches to activate various circuits, and the pushbutton starter, are all on a custom console in its place. Nice touch. Once started, the exhaust note, amplified from the large exhaust and absence of sound deadening inside the car is unmistakably 900 turbo. Sitting in a racing seat is not. I adore Saab seats, and while the Sparco seat and 5 point harness aren’t bad, even after 90 minutes in the car, I missed my real Saab seat. Another thing I missed was the 900 smell (every C900 owner knows what I mean). Apparently that does reside in the fabrics, and not in the bones of the car. Once I pulled off, the driving experience was at once familiar.
I was immediately at home in this minimalist 900. Delicious clutch (even with upgraded bits), strong brakes, wonderful steering, and handling that was completely predictable and sure footed, even on modest street tires. When I think back to my parents’ first new car, I recall that it had no radio, a rubber floor mat, crank windows, and not much else. So it was with the SPG. It got me to thinking—do we really need all that junk in a car? I realize that this SPG is not a viable daily driver if only for the noise level, even with ear plugs, and I’m talking road-noise, not exhaust.. When you get rid of all the toys—the NAV, the audio system, the sunroof, the SID, the trip computer, the cruise control…..the only thing you’re left with is driving. Now there’s a novel thing to focus on in a car! It’s like removing all the sauce and stuff on a plate and having just the piece of meat and eating it unadorned. This may not be for everyone, but a real meat lover will like nothing better. Thus, I found myself, even when loafing along on the highway in the right lane in the SPG, very much enjoying the experience.
Could I drive a bare-naked car every day? Almost. A C900, which I drive now, isn’t that far removed when compared to a modern car, so I think I could. I would want to keep some insulation, normal seats, and a heater and defroster are a must. I do like a sunroof but could live without one. Likewise I could also do without power windows, locks, cruise control, AC and carpeting. Yes, I would also like to have a radio and clock. But not much else.
The realization in all this to me was that if you like a car, then reduce that car to its bones and still like it, then you know that your passion for the car is deep-rooted and goes to that car’s essence. Toys and luxuries are nice to have, but applied to an uninspiring set of bones is like (pardon me here) putting lipstick on a pig. I bet that a lot of Saab drivers would feel the same. Take a Lexus, say, and strip it down and ask Lexus owners what they think. I bet the reaction would be a bit different. I believe that many Saab drivers would love driving a Saab sans accoutrements—not that they’d give them up for good—and this may be why we are so passionate about these cars.
