Cars - Chapter six 1982 Saab 900 Turbo

Finally! My first new car ever.

Seeing as one of my life motivators is to be different, when I finally realized that I could afford a new car (even at a usurious interest rate) I opted for a Saab instead of a BMW. One of my buddies in the office (Dave Smith. He was a mining engineer from Wyoming, and my partner in crime during one of the worst incidents in my Exxon career. That involved a vehicle, too. A Chevy Suburban. Now, back in 1981 a Suburban was a working truck. We used ours mainly for a surveying truck, not a housewife's succor transporter. And it was big and ungainly, with a manual transmission with a crawler first gear. The less said about what actually HAPPENED in that truck the better, but suffice it to say that beer, and a fire hydrant, were involved) had a Saab and he loved it:

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Quirky, of course, but who doesn't love quirky? I mean, the ignition key was on the floor between the seats! (That had something to do with Saab's origin as a aircraft manufacturer. But I am not sure what. Not like Porsche, who puts the ignition switch on the left side of the steering wheel so that in a Le Mans style racing start you can have your right hand on the shifter.)

While I never was in a wreck with this car (that was left to my brother Matthew) it was sort of jinxed. The heated seats never heated (not that big a deal) but you could never turn the regular heater OFF. (Not such a big deal in Denver, where I was living at the time, but a BiG problem when I moved back to Houston. This caused one of the strangest fixes I even did to a car. I was able to figure out how to divert the cooling fluid (which that car used in the heater coil) back to the radiator hose bu cutting one of the hoses and installing a manual valve. Then, whenever I would need the heat, I would have to open the hood and switch the valve. The problem was that the valve could not take the heat of the coolant, and failed, spilling all the coolant onto the roadway. I had to have the car towed to the dealership and my "fix" fixed.

The car also had a problem with its transmission. Right before the warranty expired, I was able to convince the dealership that there was something wrong with the transmission. They opened it up, and had to replace first and second gear.

By the end of that car's life it turned to a very noisy car. It had a ton of rattles and squeaks, exacerbated by the fact that the read seat was a fold down seat, thereby adding a whole new level of noise producing joints.

But it was my first new car ever, and I certainly still think of it fondly.

I just will not ever buy another Saab.