Dinna dinna dinna dinna dinna dinna dinna dinna Saab man!

About two and a half years ago, I wrote this:

I have a thing for Saab cars: I think the 9-5 Estate is a work of automotive art, my buttocks reckon the seats are the best in the business and I love the interiors, even when they’re orange – as many were in the 80s.

I was getting rid of my ageing, petrol-powered Saab 9-5 estate at the time: it was costing me far too much to run, and a diesel Mondeo was a much more sensible thing to have, so I bought one of those. It was a really good car until it started getting all breaky and explodey.

So naturally, I’ve traded the Mondeo in against one of these:

To be fair, I did need an estate again, as we’ve just got another dog (Molly, a black lab. She’s nuts). But I could have bought a Mondeo estate, or something else sensible, and I didn’t.

I can’t help it. There’s something about the shape of them, the big comfy seats, the dashboard layout, the ignition barrel in the centre console and the horrific wood panelling that really appeals to me, and the whole time I had the Mondeo I’d see big silver Saab estates and wish I was driving one. And now I am – a diesel with the most hilariously agricultural engine I’ve ever heard, a mileage reading that says “THE MOON, TWICE”, the wing mirror from a slightly older model and some really awful attempts at touching up scrapes on the paint.

I bloody love it.

Saab stopped making the estate in 2010. I genuinely don’t know what I’ll want to drive when the supply of decent used ones (and parts for them) dries up a few years from now.


Posted

in

by