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My first real car having been a 1980 Saab 900GLi, I have always had a fondness for Saabs in general. Sadly, that car got totalled in a snowstorm on the NYS Thruway in 1986 with about 150,000 miles on it, most of them by me. I loved that car. Not only for the practicality of it, the huge trunk which was so usefull moving couches, the ability to go anywhere in the harsh northeastern winters, but also the purr of the exhaust, the whoosh of the vent controls, the feel of the shifter... Then I recieved a company car shortly after that and never had to buy a car for myself for many years.
On to the present day. The company cars are gone now and I have to buy my own again. Years of automatic transmissions later, multi-tasking while driving thousands of miles each month for work; and the manual transmission just doesn't seem practical anymore for work purposes. But I miss my years behind the Saab shifter. I'd love a weekend driver to run around in.
I can't say exactly when it hit me or what prompted it, but I started looking at Saab Sonetts online late in the spring of last year and I found this site. I hadn't seen a Sonett in what seemed like decades, matter of fact, the only time I can clearly remember seeing one in person was back in the 80's when I was getting my 900 serviced at the local Saab dealership.
Then there it was. A 1973 Sonett III, sitting outside in front of a local garage. Fifteen years I had driven past it, never realizing what it was until last spring. I stopped, took pictures of it last spring with my digital camera. One of the mechanics noticed me, came out and we talked. He said he had painted the Sonett for an interested customer 15 years ago, and the customer never came back to pick it up. It sat there through fifteen harsh upstate NY winters, unwanted and unnoticed.
I stopped to take a closer look at it today. The front tires are flat. The front chassis barely clears the ground. The front rocker panels are rusted, the windshield is cracked, the frame is probably shot for all I know. But it makes me dream, it tortures my soul, makes me wish I could turn back the clock fifteen years. Its got five beautiful soccerball rims. Everything is there, what hasn't rusted away.
I wouldn't touch it now with a ten foot pole, mostly because I am not a mechanic. I don't do body work. And I don't have a garage to put it in. But it gets me to wondering. How much time does this Sonett have left, if any, before it ever has the chance to see the open road again? And how much time do I have left to get a Sonett of my own? Now I have another reason to try and get that garage built this year.
So here are my questions to you. How many Sonetts are there now? Are there more out there waiting to be discovered and rescued from a rusty grave? Are their numbers increasing, or decreasing? Are the Sonett lovers resurrecting them back from the dead, or are they slowly fading away with fewer and fewer gracing our roads each year?
I'd like to know, because I'd love to be a Sonett owner too.
posted by 66.65.24...
, Fri, 3 Feb 2006 05:49:01
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