On a rainy day in late October of 2009, I drove from my sister’s house in Syracuse, New York to Hartford, Connecticut with my brother in law and his son to buy what I thought was going to be a first car for my daughters, Noble and Nora. I'd owned Saabs for years and loved them, although at the time I was Saabless. We’d gotten their older stepsister Cassie a used classic Saab 900 several years earlier as her first car, and the brand’s legendary crashworthiness saved her life when she crashed it into a tree at 50mph and walked away with nothing worse than bruises from the seatbelt and a pair of traumatized parents. The car I’d found for Nora and Noble was a 1978 Saab 99GLE, a rare five door wagonback with worn and faded gray paint that appealed to my Japanese sense of wabi-sabi. Remarkably, it had no rust on it, the interior had been professionally redone, and it had an automatic transmission, which was important in that not having to be preoccupied with manually shifting gears would give the girls one less thing to have to stress out over as they learned the more critical skills necessary to safe driving for nervous beginners. I knew that the tranny had some problems, but for the price and the cool factor that comes with older Saabs, I figured that if I had to put a thousand into repairs, it would still provide cheap, safe transportation for my girls.
But the transmission in the 99GLE died as we pulled into Peyman and Cindy’s driveway in Syracuse, and I found that even if we could find a replacement or have it rebuilt, we were looking at $3500 or more. So it sat up there until I became possessed by one of my impulsive bad ideas.
I’m kind of a car nut. We won’t go into that here, but it’s significant to the story. Grinding through a Craigslist search on my computer one night, I ran across an ad for a full front clip from a 1990 16 valve intercooled turbo with a five speed manual transmission that a guy was selling cheap in Cincinnati. I had heard of Saab 99s being modified and having these much more powerful engines dropped into them, and having since also acquired an 8 valve 1978 99GL with a four speed that I was enjoying as a daily driver, I convinced myself that I could turn that gray 99GLE into a super nasty street sleeper, have fun with it for a few months, then sell it to buy the girls a more suitable car by the time they really needed one, without losing money. How wrong I was.
I had everything delivered to a shop that I’d been told knew how to do the conversion, made a deal with the shop owner, and gave him money up front (a big mistake) with the understanding that the car would be done in a couple of months. But it took him fourteen months, endless cajoling, and nearly double what I’d expected to spend to give me back a car that still needed tweaking. In the meantime, the recession had bitten deep into our finances, and it was clear once I had it that I needed to sell the Saab conversion car as quickly as possible.
Well, the recession had scaled back the spending habits of Saab enthusiasts who I thought would be eager customers too, and after trying in vain for a couple of months to sell the car, I cut my price by half, then a few months later, disgusted at the size of the loss I was having to stomach, cut the price again. By this time, the car situation for the girls was becoming a problem, and I was feeling humiliated over my poor judgment and bad luck, along with my inability to buy a used car without first getting rid of the Saab. Then one night a week or so ago, I got a call from an automotive writer in the Detroit area who had been watching the price in my Saabnet ad drop and could no longer resist. We made a deal that included my meeting him with the car in Pittsburgh, a five hour drive for me, on New Year’s Day, and taking a one way flight back to Lancaster county. I took a hell of a beating, but I was ok with it.
In the meantime, I’d been looking for months for a more suitable vehicle for the girls, and after deciding against tempting fate with another old Saab automatic, I decided that it would be a used Subaru from a reliable dealer less than a mile from my house, up on Route 441. When I’d talked with him a month earlier, he had three cars that fit our budget, but by the time the buyer for the Saab had appeared, his stock in my price range had dwindled to a single 1997 Legacy wagon. Not as cool as a vintage Saab, but safe, dependable, and a perfect Christmas present for Nora and Noble. After wrangling a down payment out of the Detroit guy, I gave the dealer a deposit to hold the car, with the balance to be paid upon my return from the Saab delivery trip to Pittsburgh. The girls will have to wait for a week after Christmas before they finally have their car, but I made sure that I would still have something special to give them. I sat out in the windy field behind the car and then in the dealer’s lot in front of it today with my sketchbook and pencils so that they would each get a piece of original car art on Christmas morning, in anticipation of the long awaited first set of wheels. They'll think I'm giving them each one of my pipe calendars, because I put the drawings into the same chipboard flat mailers that I've been shipping the calendars in. Once they pull out the mounting boards and lift back the cover flaps, I think they'll figure it out. Merry Christmas, Noble and Nora! Drive safely!
love, dad
