Much like "another yellow 99" 
So I picked up the Edwardian Grey Notchback...which is really some other color that has yet to be determined. Either it is Rose Quartz and most of the pink has faded out of or it is a silver of some sort. I picked the car up from the seller for $500 down in Putnam Valley NY...which is in part of NY that qualifies as you can't get there from here.
Like any good Saab acquisition the retrieval of the car was an adventure itself. Putnam Valley is located about 3.5 hours South of me and is near the border with Connecticut. The town is a nice scenic town located off of the Taconic Parkway and is in the mountains...well big steep hills. The roads are mostly paved but are these crazy twisty roads with lots of abrupt crests and turns as if they just paved whatever terrain was in front of them. I never actually looked at a map to see where the place was and just noted that the directions stated about 3.5 hours from Rutland Vermont. So I hopped in the van Saturday around noon with plans to meet the seller around 4pm. I drove to Jon William's place first to borrow his tow bar so I could flat tow the car back. having not looked at the map I figured that I would be about 1 hour closer upon reaching Jons...of course this was false. I was still 3.5 hours away....Jon is due West of me...so I made no forward progress to the South
Contacted seller and pushed meeting time back a bit. Fast forward a few hours. After turning off the Taconic Parkway I made my way to the house. All along the road there were signs of SENSATIONAL SUPERSTORM SANDY THE SUPEREST SUPREME STORM OF THE...whatever. There were signs of damage but mostly in the form of downed trees and damaged power lines...including the line I had to drive over on the highway
.Bought the car and headed for home. Towing on the Taconic is not legal so I had to take Rte 9 North instead. Getting to Rte 9 required getting over two mountain/hill ranges and though I made it I was beginning to wonder. At one point I was in the middle of a hairpin corner at what felt like a 15% grade when the van lost all traction. Luckily the traction control saved the day and I was able to crawl up the grade. These roads would make great TSD or Performance rally roads given there narrow, steep, windy nature but I would not recommend for towing a car
Last part of story revolves around me not getting to the bank in time to get $500 out in cash. So i had to go down with $300 cash (ATM Daily limit) and pay balance with check etc...not such a big deal...except I had no money for tolls and thus had to route around all tolls. This mostly made the trip home longer as I ended up taking Rte 9 to rte 32 North all the way to Albany before getting back on 87.
About the car:
When I got the car home I noted it had a bad case of coldstartitis, The headlights did not want to come on, and the reverse lights and some dash lights stayed on when the key was off. Last night I spent some time trouble shooting the headlight system and determined all the components were working properly though I found the drivers side low beam to be burned out. I had originally suspected that the headlight switch was bad or something was up with the ignition switch. I found that something is not quite right with the ignition switch/ignition key assembly. If you start the car and leave the key in the position it returns to on its own you won't have any dash or headlights but if you turn it back a few degrees to the point just before it shuts the car off the headlights work...so someone either horsed the key or those pieces in there are messed up somehow such that the ignition switch is not aligned properly.
I let the car idle for 10 or 15 minutes last night and the cooling fan cycled, the temperature selector turns smoothly and the air position switch works well. The car puts out....good heat and after the car ran for a while it smoothed out nicely. Before the car goes on the road I will pull the engine out and do some longer term prep. The transmission seems decent but won't know for sure until I start driving it. I have a recently refinished cylinder head that will go on, a set of 16v headers, etc. I want to clean everything up and regasket while it is easy to do so. Upgrade the battery cables and grounds etc.
In the interior the headliner is in the car but drooping everywhere. Now that I am a pro at pulling Saab glass I may remove the rear window and drop the headliner shell out, reinforce and recover it, and put back in. The seats and carpet look good though the dash is thoroughly cracked and the glove box door has delaminated. The door inserts are in bad shape and the power window motors are toast.
The engine bay appears to be very clean with little or no rust and the front radiator cross member also looks very clean. The fender lips are good on 3 out of 4 corners while the passenger front has a few small bubbles just starting to form. The real rust issues are in the normal places...the drivers side floor above the frame rib is rusted through while the rib is good. The passenger side is starting to rust but is not through yet. There are two spots in the rear wheel wells behind the wheel and in the corners where they like to rust and both are through. The axle tunnels are also rusted and have pieces missing...in this area it looks like it got rusty and someone just cut out the rust and then resealed it. The car may have had an accident at some point but its not so obvious as to where because the fenders don't look repaired. The bumper mounts are pushed slightly to the passenger side but this could have been a simple bumper hit.
Plans for the car: fix the rust damage, do some general overhaul maintenance, drive car for winter.
192,000 miles on the odo...not sure if it works still.
He was probably messing around trying to get it out and tweaked something.
