Pass me the akavit

Word came yesterday that Saab has moved another step closer to being history.

This may not mean much to you, but it really makes me sad. I’ve had Saabs for a little over 12 years, and I love them. Turbos, you understand.

When I moved to the UK I had to pick a company car. (One of the best benefits of working there at the time: almost everyone except secretaries and maybe janitors got company cars, with petrol cards. Meaning: no car payments, no insurance premiums, no $50 at a whack filling up the fuel tank.) Many of my colleagues had BMWs, but I wasn’t that impressed with the BMW I had as a temp car.

Someone suggested a Saab, so I hied me down to the Saab dealer in Newport, Wales, to try one out. Unlike my experience in the US, they let me take one out for a day so I could take it to the Tesco’s and down the pub. But I felt it had no scoot to it.

I mentioned that to the leasing manager and he replied, “I think Madam would prefer a turbo version.”

Well, he was right. All I had to do was rev up the on-ramp to the eastbound M4, feeling my back slam into the seat and I was sold.

On behalf of my employer, of course.

He thought I was nuts insisting on a sunroof (“Madam, this is the UK!”), but I loved driving that car. Even in France, where I was a left-hand brain driving a right-hand car in a left-hand environment. (I had only one incident where I lost my bearings and swung into the wrong lane, but that was in Bayeux coming off a highway and there wasn’t anyone around to be in danger. Not even a cow.)

When I got back to the US rather precipitously (thanks to a corporation that shut down its ex-pat program because it was suddenly much cheaper to do without us) I had just about a month before I needed to buy a new car. My choices were Celica (which I’d owned before going overseas) and…well, the only other thing I knew was Saab. An American car wasn’t in the picture, primarily because they didn’t make manual transmissions.

But in the three years I’d been abroad the Celica had got much smaller and costlier, so I ended up going with the Saab coupe. Couldn’t get the red one I wanted, but I squeaked by with a silver one, turbo, sunroof. Everything I wanted except the color.

And Selkie has been a great car for the past ten years (less a month). Aside from dying on the ramp between I-495 onto the Reston Toll Road on my way back from the Maryland Renaissance Faire in 2002, regular maintenance, a battery and four tires at one time or another, he’s given me nearly 73K miles of driving pleasure.

(And even at that incident, there was a plus. I got towed into the dealership in Falls Church on a Saturday afternoon, where the fellow behind the desk was talking in French to someone on his mobile phone. When he was done and registering my repair situation, I asked—en Français—where he was from. La Côte d’Ivoire. Dunno whether it was the Français-parler-ing, but he gave me a blue 9-5 convertible as the loaner for the few days it took to get my car repaired.)

But Saab, Saab—poor Saab hasn’t done well under GM and since. The mechanic where I take Selkie now, Swedish Auto Factory, has now added Subaru to their marque. When I pointed out that “Subaru” isn’t really a Viking name, the owner shrugged—they need to plan ahead.

I really hope they find another investor to keep the company afloat. In another five years or so I’ll need a new car.

Jag är så ledsen