C900 SPG Purchase - Possible Fiasco

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TurboBudapest
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C900 SPG Purchase - Possible Fiasco

Postby TurboBudapest » Sat Jul 26, 2014 7:52 am

Thought I would share with you my story of buying a Saab 900 SPG (T16S for us Europeans) this last week (actually, it was a seven month process). I suppose this will be a story about how not to buy a Saab 900….Am also posting this over at Saablink so apologies to those of you who hang out at both forums.

In short, I grew up in a Saab family with my parents owning mainly Saab 9000s (although what I consider to be my first car was a 1981 C900 gle). We purchased our first saab in January 1988, and have had a total of 12 cars since (including the C900 I just purchased). I am also own a fully restored Saab 99 Turbo and a fully restored Saab 9000 Aero (post to follow soon on these cars as well).

My infatuation with Saab began in 1985 at the age of ten - one of my father’s colleagues who we would car pooled with to school owned a 1985 900 T16S (aero) in silver with red interior. This car left a huge impression on me, and even though our neighbor down the street purchased new a Ferrari Mondial new around the same time, somehow the C900 stood out to me as a kid as being very special, and I decided at the time that “when I grew up”, I would own one.

I started looking for a flat nosed C900s in silver with red interior about three years ago. Unfortunately, C900s are rare generally in Hungary, as Saabs were not sold in Hungary till I believe 1991, and few were sold new here. There also is a very active Saab 900 club in Hungary, and good examples are snapped up immediately when they come up for sale. So I have been trolling around Blockett and mobile.de for the last three years. As a general rule, the Italian cars tend to be better because of the drier and warmer climate. Also, Saab sold a ton of C900s in the 80s to style conscious Italians. I know that Swedish cars from the North also tend to be relatively rust free as they do not use salt on the roads up north. Cars from the Stockholm area tend to be quite rotten….

What I have found through my search over the last five years is:

- C900s are generally much more expensive in Europe than in the US. If a car goes for USD 5000 in the US, a comparable car will be at least EUR 5000 if not more in Europe, even though the Euro is generally 33% stronger than the dollar. I would say that on average, cars go for 40% to 50% more here.
900s are generally going up fast in price – cars that I thought were too expensive and USD 5000 three years ago are now changing hands for USD 8000-10,0000.

- Good SPGs/T16S examples are becoming very rare and hard to come by. They generally fall on two spectrums of the scale – very used and rusted, or in excellent condition (either restored or original) but extremely expensive (there are some A1 condition SPGs being sold for over USD 20K in Europe nowadays).

- At least in Europe, if one finds a low mileage unmolested example of a T16S, it normally is a base S model with cloth interior. Actually, Saabs sold in the US generally tend to have much higher specs than those sold in the US.

- Flat nose 900s are generally rare what ever the type. About 80% of the cars being sold today are slant nosed models.

- In Europe, the top collectors of C900s seem to be the Dutch. The Germans also have a strong following. Otherwise, Sweden is still the best source for C900s.

- In Europe, you never see C900 SPGs for less than USD 4000 – whatever the condition. Honestly, it seems that the prices for SPGs bottom out around this level generally

In October, I stumbled upon an Internet listing for a 1985 SPG in Silver with red leather interior. It was an original two owner Bologna car – the dealer/collector selling had bought the car in 2006 from the second owner, and put it straight into storage (planning to restore or sell at some point, but never got round to it). Having spent its life in a warm dry part of Italy, I figured it would have little rust, which the owner confirmed telephonically. He sent me very detailed pictures which showed some rust on the door bottoms, but otherwise the car seemed in very good shape. The front seats had been reskinned to very high standard, and it looked to be all there.

My feeling is that any 30 year old car which has not been restored is probably going to need a restoration at some point any way. So my goal was to find a car which is reasonably complete and reasonably rust free, and I would restore the vehicle in stages over a three year period, including full re-spray, suspension rebuild and engine rebuild. Although the car I purchased looked very dirty and used, it seemed to fulfill these criteria.

Problem was that the car was in Bologna Italy, and my wife was very pregnant (she gave birth four weeks ago). After a ton of haggling, we settled on a price of EUR 4500 (USD 6000) with delivery to Hungary and export papers arranged. I looked into delivery costs, and you are probably looking at EUR 1000 to deliver a call from Italy to Hungary. As to export papers, I was in negotiations with another dealer in Italy on a C900, and they were asking for EUR 500 for arranging the export papers. Travelling to Italy to check out the car and stay a night would probably have been bout EUR 500 on top of that. So I was figuring that I was buying the car for EUR 3000 (USD 4000), with the transport and export papers costing about EUR 1500 (USD 2000). I did not have time to travel to Bologna given our recent addition to the family, so I decided to take a leap of faith. We agreed on a down payment, and the dealer brought the car to Budapest where we agreed I would pay the rest of the purchase price.

The dealer arrived yesterday, and I got to look at the car close up for the first time (pictures attached).

First the good:

- The body is incredibly rust free. Absolutely no rust anywhere on the hood, wheel arches, trunk and all the other usual external body areas. There were scratches and dents here and there, but nothing detrimental. Also no rust on the hood underside.

- The only rust on the top part of the car is on the door bottoms – some bubling, but easily fixable according to my Saab indy.

- The interior is in reasonably good shape. The front seats are in excellent shape, the rear seats are very dry but no rips.

- The engine is sweet as a nut. It turns, breaks, rides, and handles great. You could tell that the car was well maintained mechanically – new quality break lines, and the engine bay was generally very clean.

- The car is complete – all the SPG panels are there and in good shape.

- Electric windows and sunroof works a treat.

- The gear box does not crunch much. The only crunch I really heard in the forward gears was just a little mechanical resistance when down shifting from third to second. I believe the shifter needs to be realigned. If I do not push the gear lever all the way to the right when putting into reverse, then there sometimes is a bit of a crunch.

The bad:

- Unfortunately there is rot on the bottom of the car. Very odd, but it seems to be almost completely just on one side – the driver’s side. The passenger side is absolutely perfect with not so much as surface rust.

- The driver’s side rear floor pan seems to have been badly repaired – no more rust, but I think we will have to tear it apart and do it properly. Panels have just been tack welded in place. Pretty sloppy.

- There is rust in the transmission tunnel lip on the driver’s side. This will need to be cut out and re-welded. I understand that there are repair panels that can be purchased for this purpose.

- There is rust on the rear shock mounts. Not sure how bad yet – when we start pealing away, it may be just a little rust – may be a lot of rust. We will only know when we start tearing into it.

- There is a little rust on the spare wheel well.

- It seems at some point the car was converted to run on LPG. the trunk interior trim will need to be replaced (my saab guy has an appropriate donor for this, so no big deal). Also, I know of a company that rebuilds wiring looms at reasonable cost in Hungary, so this will be the back up option.

- I was fully expecting the wiring loom to be dry rotted being a 1985, and of course this was the case. We will need to do a full wiring loom replacement – my indy also said this should not be too big of a deal for him, and he should have a good donor wiring loom in stock.

- The headline was badly replaced some time ago – I will likely have to rip it out and replace.
None of the gauges work other than the speedo. I guess this is as a result of the wiring loom being dry rotted.

- The axle on one side needs replacing. Of course all the regular bushings also need to be replaced.

- The radiator grill is cracked. The spoiler lip is ripped in the middle.

- The tires are also a bit cracked and need to be changed – not the end of the world, but an expense nonetheless.

When the rust issues came to light, I almost did not buy the car and was close to deciding to forgo the deposit (EUR 1500). But sometimes cars find you and are meant to be in your possession. Somehow I feel this was the case with the SPG. I know this was the case with respect to my 99 Turbo and 9000 Aero.

Am posting this in two parts - please see below for continuation
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TurboBudapest
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Re: C900 SPG Purchase - Possible Fiasco

Postby TurboBudapest » Sat Jul 26, 2014 7:56 am

CONTINUATION FROM ABOVE

So the plan is that I will restore the car in stages as follows:

STAGE 1 – Get the car on the road

- First Stage will be to get the car in good usable condition.

- I will have the rust fixed on the bottom of the car, and the minor rust on the bottoms of the door fixed. I really want this car to be structurally sound, and do not want to worry about rust getting worse.

- I will also have the car gone over, change fluids in the engine, gear box, cooling system and braking system.

- The wiring loom obviously also needs to be changed ASAP – am a bit afraid of starting an electrical fire!

- New tires, windwhield wipers, and rubbers on the door windows will also be needed (am afraid that the dried door rubbers will scratch the windows.

- I want to then drive the car for a year or so, and see what it is that I like/don’t like about it.

STAGE 2 – Make the car mechanically perfect

- Before I start making the car beautiful, I will want to make the care mechanically perfect. This is important to me, and the approach I took with the Aero. For me the driving experience is more important than the looks.

- If needed, I will rebuild the engine and turbo.

- Full suspension rebuild with new bushings, Abbot Racing springs (have very good experience with these on the 9000 Aero) and Koni adjustable shocks (again – great experience with these on the 9000 Aero).

- Perhaps an ECU upgrade – perhaps for the Abbot Racing unit (happy to hear views as to what is the best).

- I do not intend to upgrade the brakes/suspension to post 87 or 9000 spec (as seems popular to do). I want to keep the car as stock as possible.

- I may consider a stainless steel exhaust. I just had one put on my 9000 Aero – if it turns out to be good, I will have the same company prepare one for the SPG.

- Where possible, I will zinc coat parts – this was done on my 99, and it looks great.

STAGE 3 – Make the car cosmetically perfect:

- Full respray

- Replace any trim which is not perfect

- Redo the headliner and dashboard (I have a good company locally who does wonders with leather – they already confirmed they could restore the dash with a new leather covering in the original colors).

In my view, this will be a two to three year program. I would do a stage every year or so. It helps that I have a great indy Saab specialist who works using excellent rates – Hungary generally has low labor costs. He also has an excellent body guy that does all the body work. They have restored a dozen or so C900s in the last five years, so I know I will be in good hands. They also did the fully body restoration on my 99, which turned out to be great.

In any event, would be grateful for your views on the above. I know most of you will feel that I greatly over paid for the car, but in my view, dirt cheap SPGs are a thing of the past. And those that are dirt cheap will cost a fortune to bring up to spec (probably requiring a donor car’s worth of parts).

I will update this thread as things develop. I planned to meet with my Indy on Tuesday to go through the car again. Will take pictures of the bottom of the car at such time (by the way – what is the best way to post pictures on this forum?).

Thanks for looking!

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Re: C900 SPG Purchase - Possible Fiasco

Postby 99Super » Sun Jul 27, 2014 9:43 am

That's a great looking SPG! I like the Silver w/ red interior, very 78 99 Turbo-ish!

Looking forward to seeing how your project goes!

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Re: C900 SPG Purchase - Possible Fiasco

Postby Geoff » Thu Jul 31, 2014 12:26 pm

I don't know, I think the car is pretty neat. Yeah it seems a little expensive to us in the US but values vary in different parts of the world. Too bad about the rust underneath but at least it all appears to be in a place that won't show when repaired. You might want to take the Aero panels off before too long and have a look under them to make sure there isn't any rust starting that could bloom out.

That red dash is pretty rare, especially here in the US. The only red dahses we got were on the '84 SPG prototypes, of which I think the US got four. I've seen a few other red dashes when I was in Sweden but still not too many.

The silver looks real good too. We only ever got black, grey, Talledega Red, and Beryl green.
The kind of dirty that doesn't wash off :eyebrows:

TurboBudapest
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Re: C900 SPG Purchase - Possible Fiasco

Postby TurboBudapest » Sun Aug 03, 2014 12:39 am

I went back to my indy to take a look at the car again, and felt a lot better about the car generally. The outer panels all seem to be in great shape and rust free (other than a little rust on the door bottoms. Problem is that he has too many projects at the moment, and looks like it will be a while before he will be able to turn his attention to this car....Ideally, I would like to have it back on the road in September so I can enjoy it for a month or two before putting it into winter storage.

Yes, the red dash is quite rare - even in Europe. My understanding is that all European bound 1985 SPGs had this full red interiour with silver paint and anthracite SPG kit. Odd that the color combo was different for the US.

My indy Saab guy has a lead on a perfect red dash from Sweden - am trying to get my hands on this....

As a general matter, the car feels like it was well taken care of except in the last five years or so of its life, when the owner basically conceded that the car was going to the junk yard sooner rather than later so stopped spending on it.

The engine really is sweet as a nut - starts up right away and purrs like a kitten. Nothing has quite the sound for a 900 T16S engine....what a burble. It is a lot like the burble of my 1978 99 Turbo but a little more refined.

The rear seat is basicaly all present, but the leather is completely hardened. Am going to look on line as to what to do to loosen it up....

In any event, I will post more picks as I go over the car with my Indy saab specialist. Keep tuned!

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Re: C900 SPG Purchase - Possible Fiasco

Postby TurboBudapest » Mon Aug 04, 2014 8:01 am

Am starting to collect parts for the SPG....just scored the steering wheel on the right for the car. I remember the first time I visited the Saab garage in the town where I grew up, there was a fully decked out flat nose 9000 T16S (with airflow kit) sporting this steering wheel. Am really reliving childhood memories with this car! Now if only I could find a good period radio.....
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Re: C900 SPG Purchase - Possible Fiasco

Postby TurboBudapest » Tue Sep 02, 2014 8:51 am

So I went over the car again with my Indy Saab specialist Thursday last week - the owner of the garage who is the main C900 expert/nut at my indy garage was on vacation when I purchased the car, so this is the first time we went over the car together.

My C900 guru greatly put my mind at ease. As to the condition of the body, things are looking much better than I originally thought:

- The car is incredibly rust free in those places on the body where you normally would see rust. In fact, he said that he rarely saw a car of this age that had no rust in the spare wheel well. The hood is perfect too, the wheel arches are fine, and the door bottoms are mainly surface rust and not much to worry about. He also said that the rust in the shock mounts is very minor, and will only require a little cleaning and painting (big relief).

- The driver side transmission tunnel is a little rusted, but not that bad. It is easily fixable.

- The big down side of the car is that the middle part of the driver's side bottom has been very badly repaired. Typical shoddy Italian garage work.....seems they cut out the panels, then tack welded them in place from the top of the car (not the bottom), then gave the whole bottom of the car a thick coating of undercoating. I wish they would have just done nothing to the bottom of the car. I have atached pics of the shoddy repairs.

- The passenger side of the bottom of the car is perfect condition - no rust at all. Also the passenger side transmission tunnel. Seems that there was a leaky power steering servo which was the saving grace for the left side (there is a nice coating of oil).

- The motor is pretty sweet, and the gear box seems to be in one piece.

- The wiring loom is also not as bad as first thought, but will need to be changed at some point. I have found a person who specializes in building wire looms, and he said he should be able to build a duplicate from scratch for me for about USD 350, which would be great.


We decided that to get the car on the road, we will need to do the following:

- Fix the transmission tunnel on the driver's side. The shoddy repair is fine for now.

- Do a big service on the engine and replace all fluids.

- Sort out the wiring loom.

- Change certain of the bushings in the front suspension.

- Replace the window rubbers.

- New set of tires.

I will drive the car for a year or so collecting parts, and then will begin with the restoration (in stages) next year.

Will keep you posted on developments....hope to have this puppy on the road in the next month or so.
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Re: C900 SPG Purchase - Possible Fiasco

Postby TurboBudapest » Mon Sep 22, 2014 2:59 pm

Hello Everyone,

Thought I would provide you with a quick update as to where I stand with the car. It took my indy Saab mechanic another three weeks to turn his attention to my car, but work has now started in earnest (what is it about these indy Saab mechanics that they are such pre madonnas?).

The following is what we agreed to do:

- Am extremely lucky in that I found a perfect condition red dash board - really about as rare as rocking horse doo doo....once it arrives (touch wood), I will post a story how I found this. It has been sittig in a guy's attic for the last ten years....this will be swapped out.

- Rust on bottom of car - They will fix all the rust on the bottom of the car. Luckily for me, they have a lightly crashed (from the UK) C900 coupe which has a perfect underside. They will basically cut out and graft into my car the entire driver's side underside from the driver's footwell back. They will also cut out and graft in the driver's side transmission tunnel which is rusted on mine. So instead of making and tacking in the pieces, it will all be original Swedish metal of which I am extremely happy.

- They will also clean up the rust on the bottoms of the door, but it will be more of a "clean up and protect" rather than fine cosmetic work. We are planning on doing a full respray in a year's time.

- They will be changing the clutch and the bearing.

- The engine will need to come out any way, so the engine bay will be fully steam cleaned.

- The wiring loom will be taken out and restored/rebuilt by a specialist. For about USD 300, he would be able to build a whole new wiring loom. May end up going with this option depending on how bad the soy based wiring loom on my car is.

- There was a little of a crunch on the second gear - worn synchromesh. They will change the synchromesh on the second gear while the engine is out (they have a 70 year old guy who works wonders with C900 transmissions).

- Front wheel bearing and an assortment of gaskets will be changed. A number of rubber bushings will also be changed.

- Driver's side front axel will be rebuilt.

- Full service of engine, etc.

- Replacement of steering wheel with the above leather version. Also change the shift knob with a nice wood one I scored.

All in all I am very psyched. My indy mechanic has been spending a lot more time with the car, and said that it is really quite solid given its age, other than the badly repaired floor pan on the driver's side. The outside is completely rust free, and the engine/turbo pulls very well. Seeing that we will be replacing the rusty/badly repaired panels on the bottom of the car with panels cut out of another car, I am not too worried about this. After this work (shoud be done in a month or so), the car should be mechanically 100%. I am actually planning to use it over the winter. My understanding is that due to Hungarian regulations, they do not salt the roads anymore but use a less toxic de-icing agent which is not as hard on cars.

Will keep you updated as the car develops!

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Re: C900 SPG Purchase - Possible Fiasco

Postby Geoff » Wed Sep 24, 2014 12:27 pm

Nice score on the red dash!
Was your's cracked? Most of our dashes in the US (black) end up cracking but that doesn't really happen in Sweden. It must be due to the amount of sunlight.
The kind of dirty that doesn't wash off :eyebrows:

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Re: C900 SPG Purchase - Possible Fiasco

Postby 87 n/a » Sun Sep 28, 2014 10:50 pm

Geoff wrote:The silver looks real good too. We only ever got black, grey, Talledega Red, and Beryl green.


The US got at least one silver SPG. It lives in my garage :yay:
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Congrats on the new car. I love them in silver, but I am biased ;)
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Re: C900 SPG Purchase - Possible Fiasco

Postby Geoff » Mon Sep 29, 2014 11:49 am

87 n/a wrote:The US got at least one silver SPG. It lives in my garage :yay:

Too cool!
The kind of dirty that doesn't wash off :eyebrows:

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Re: C900 SPG Purchase - Possible Fiasco

Postby TurboBudapest » Sun Oct 05, 2014 12:48 am

@ Geof: to answer your question, the dash was incredibly cracked. I have seen a ton of very cracked C900 dashes in my life, but this one certainly was one of the worst I have ever seen. Deep canyons running no only on the top, but also over the sides up front. I will take pictures once the dash is out. The cracks were thanks to it being in the warm and sunny climate of Bologna Italy all its life. The red replacement dash was an absolute score. From what I can tell, extremely few were exported outside of Sweden, and these were normally used on special editions. In Europe, a large part of the C900 SPGs (or T16S as they were called here) from 1985 had these red dashes and interior. It seems that they stopped making them around 1988 or 1989, because I have yet to see a later car with this dash. I am incredibly lucky to have found one in perfect condition.

@ 89 NA: Your car looks amazing. Oddly, the silver SPG was quite common in Europe, but mainly for the early flatnose examples. Not sure I have seen many slant nosed SPGs in silver come to think of it. Yours must have been special order. For me, this color combo was absolutely key, as the car I fell in love with at the tender age of 10 was silver with a red interior. Yours looks to be in excellent shape-what is the history?

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Update on progress

Postby TurboBudapest » Sun Oct 05, 2014 1:22 am

I went to my indy last week to check up on progress. They had cut out the whole bottom drivers side panel from a donor car, and were getting my car ready to have the new part welded in. They wanted to first see how the panel was installed on the donor car before cutting my car up. I have attached a picture of the donor panel below.

The donor panel was in great shape. The jack points have a little surfact rust, but are otherise in great shape. There is a little rust on two of the edges which they will cut out and replace with new rust before mounting on the car. I am so lucky that we had this panel handy as the restoration would have been a nightmare without it. Donor cars are very rare in Hungary, as the car was only sold for two years new in Hungary, and very few were sold as it was considered extremely expensive for the local market.

One of the suspension mounting points on the rear is on this panel, so it is also very important from a structural point of view. Every time I see the repair done on my car and how slopy it is, I have to resist the urge to travel to Bologna, find the two bit mechanic who performed this "repair" and give him a good brow beating.

I have attached a picture of the replacement panel as it was cut out.

The engine and rear suspension have been removed from the car. I have also attached a photo of the engine bay. It is in quite good shape, probably beacause of the oily dirt providing rust protection duties. The only rust in the engine bay is surface rust at one of the welding seams on each side, and surface rust on the battery tray (it looks a lot worse than it is-it will come up fine after sand blasting and painting).

We also went over the outside of the car again, and both my indy and I were amazed at what great condition the car is in generally. In fact, the outside panels are in such good condition (with a few smaller dents and scratches) that we decided to change our restoration strategy a bit. Instead of making this car show room perfect, we will restore this as a survivor. Since 99 percent of the outside paint is original (there was only a small section resprayed on the driver door), and given that the SPG panels are in surprisingly good shape with only one panel scratched and all panels sitting flush to the metal - something my indy said he has never seen on a car of this vintage), our restoration plan has been slightly changed to the following:

- Since the engine is out and it is in pretty good shape, we will repaint the engine bay. I in particular feel this is important as there is light surface rust which could turn into more serious rust in the more damp climate of Budapest.

- We will stick with the plan of completely restoring the bottom of the car.

- As to the outside of the car, we will take off the SPG panels and all trim, and give it a very thorough deep polish. There are two places on the outside where we maz give it a bit of a localized fix. For a 30 year old car, it is so rare to have such original paint, and I see value in keeping it as such. Also, this route is lighter on the budget, and if in several years I am not happy with it, we can always do the full respray.

- The door bottoms will be repaird and resprayed on the interior. There is an odd crack in the front door jam - this will also be wended ans sprayed.

- I would respray the area between the rear lights matt black, as the paint has faded quite a bit. By the way, was this panel originally painted matt black, or silver? If silver, then we may repaint silver although I like the way the car looks with this panel painted matt black. Thoughts please?

- As all of the suspension has to come out to do the above described repairs, we are going to do a full suspension rebuild. All suspension parts will be sand plasted and repainted. All bushes will be replaced. My indy just did the same for another C900 owner, and I was incredibly impressed with the result.

- For now, we will not touch the motor other than to give it a general tune and cleaning. The synchromesh will be repaired on the second gear.Clutch will be replaced as per the above

- The steering rack will be completely reconditioned - my indy has a good connection to do this, and has had several C900 racks rebuilt over the years.

I have attached a few pics of the donor panel, the engine bay, and the rusted transmission tunnel which will need to be repaired. I suppose I should change the name of this thread to reflect that it has become a build thread of sorts.

Have a great Sunday.

Ed
Last edited by TurboBudapest on Sun Oct 05, 2014 5:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: C900 SPG Purchase - Possible Fiasco

Postby TurboBudapest » Sun Oct 05, 2014 1:31 am

Here are the pictures as promised.

In one of the pics, you can see where the rear suspension mounting point was repaired in an incredbly dodgy manner.
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Re: C900 SPG Purchase - Possible Fiasco

Postby 87 n/a » Wed Oct 08, 2014 3:10 pm

You have quite the project ahead of you. A guy in the UK recently completed a restoration on a nearly identical car as yours. I believe he has won some awards and made it into a couple magazines.

TurboBudapest wrote:@ 87 NA: Your car looks amazing. Oddly, the silver SPG was quite common in Europe, but mainly for the early flatnose examples. Not sure I have seen many slant nosed SPGs in silver come to think of it. Yours must have been special order. For me, this color combo was absolutely key, as the car I fell in love with at the tender age of 10 was silver with a red interior. Yours looks to be in excellent shape-what is the history?


As for the history on mine, I have been the "caretaker" for this unicorn since the summer of 1993. I do my best to keep her in shape. I think the Saab Gods made me the lucky recipient of my baby. My understanding of its origin is that it was a prize of-sorts awarded to the number one Saab dealership in the US for 1987 by Bob Sinclair. Whether #1 meant sales volume or customer service or some other factor, I never did find out that information.

Best of luck to you!
Jesus H. Tapdancin Christ,...


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