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The SAAB Aero Academy-just an awesome experience! I was there a week ago.
It was set up very much like the one day, Skip Barber High Performance driving school held at the New Hampshire International Speedway SAAB sponsored at the '97 National SAAB Owners Convention in Waterville Valley, NH that I attended.
You check in, get your nametag, Aero Academy Tshirt and hat. Sign multiple waivers. There were only 5 other attendees of the class the weekend I went. Three of us drove, three flew. The three who drove had 9-3s. The three who flew had 9-5s.
The other two that drove had identical looking Fusion Blue 9-3 Aero Converts. One was purchased via IDS, with Grey leather instead of the typical Parchment. It was also curiously missing the sharkfin antenna (but understandable, since Onstar is not available in '06).
The classes were given by Panoz instructors. All of them had varying degrees of fairly extensive race experience.
There's a one hour morning and afternoon classroom session each day, followed by three driving exercises. Schedule was pretty much 9a-3p. With the smaller number of students, we got to do more driving. First event was an autocross, which got our baseline times. Next was the wet skidpad, followed by the slalom. Broke for lunch. Then, another classroom session. The afternoon consisted of a "balance the tennis ball" autocross, followed by a lane change/brake exercise and another wet/dry skidpad exercise which finished the day.
The "wet" exercises were done with ESP OFF. An instructor rides with you and yanks the handbrake to induce oversteer and you've gotta correct. Early on, most of us just spun.
7pm was the Chateau Elan tour and wine tasting, followed by dinner at 8p.
The morning sessons consisted of autocross with instructor and another wet/dry skidpad exercise. The afternoon was the final autocross-one solo, the other as a group (like a relay). We were divided into two teams (Team 9-3 and Team 9-5), and had a "friendly" competition to see which group was faster.
Everyone improved their solo times (one by over 4seconds!). Three of us were within 2/100 of a second of each other! Team 9-3 beat Team 9-5 by a less than two second margin.
All in all, a great way to spend the weekend! By the time the second day came around. we were all driving with reckless abandon (when the realization set it that we were not in our own cars, but identical vehicles provided at SAABs great expense). Think of it as SAAB giving you a 9-3 Aero to race for the weekend.
We averaged about 7MPG during the exercises. SAAB had nearly a dozen cars for the Academy, both 9-3 Aeros and 9-5 2.3T Sports-mostly autos but one stick version of both. It was a blast to see firsthand the limits of the 9-3 Aero (and 9-5 2.3T Sport) in a safe, closed environment.
At the end of the Aero Academy, the instructors dished out prizes for the lowest Autocross time and most improved Autocross time. We also all got Certificates for completing the course.
We had one of the smallest classes there. Typically, there would be about 20 or so in a class. GM is partly to blame for that. They tried to dump the Panoz Racing School from teaching the SAA (which they had been doing since it was the Viggen Academy), but reversed that decision. It was one of the reasons why the SAA was slow to get up and running this year (as it typically runs year round).
Sadly, I was told only 30% of Aero owners take advantage of this great perk. That other 70% have no freaking idea what they're missing out on. And I can assure you that 100% of 2.0T owners don't know what they're missing out on, either!
You '06 Aero owners need to take advantage of this great perk!
posted by 208.54.95...
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