1984 Saab - "The Old Girl 900"
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Welcome back everyone to our vehicle of the month series. This June we have a very sweet childhood powered story from Kirsty and her 1984 Saab. Her story began when she was just 3 years old, and here she shares her earliest memories and love of the Saab:
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Spec: As she was a one-off custom build by saab, there isn't any other car like her in the world. Her spec list is so long I almost always forget something, but here goes:
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1984, 2 litre 8 valve APC turbo, 4 door sedan.
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Colour: no, she isn't beige, although her predecessor was! She's 155 Elfenben, Swedish for "Ivory". The side stripes were a very rare option, not available in all countries, and rarely chosen when they were. To date, she remains the ONLY sedan I've ever found with these stripes. There was another silver sedan whose owner had our stripes copied (or at least used the photos of ours as inspiration for similar design), after he saw her at an SOC show years ago and quite liked them.
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Wheels: saab "Inca" alloys - she had these from new, but dad did swap her to aero 3-spokes for a while from the 1990s as those were easier to clean, but I've swapped her back again to be original - she is 100% original as she left the factory, completely unmodified. She is even on her ORIGINAL turbo! We did refurbish it a few years ago, but it is her original.
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Interior: rare cashmere velour sports seats - the same pattern as the usual leather seat pattern, but in fabric so as not to get too hot in the desert sun. Also the reason she rather uniquely doesn't have a sunroof - entirely on purpose! When you're in a desert, the less sun in the car the better. She also has factory window tints, and air conditioning, as well as an oil cooler and high temperature thermostat so she runs cool even in the hottest heatwaves with no trouble.
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She has a chin spoiler, sump guard (handy on graded roads), power steering, cruise control, electric wing mirrors & aerial, and electric windows front AND back - each of these things alone was fairly special back in 1984, but all of them together was pretty unheard of. She has her original spoiler on the boot.
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In 2018 we took The Old Girl on a pilgrimage to her birthplace at Trollhattan in Sweden, a trip I've wanted to do for many years.
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In 1984, we lived abroad in Oman in the middle east, where dad bought a beige coloured saab 900 GLS 4 door sedan, (in the UK we had a brown 900 GL hatchback), but he had his heart set on a turbo, a new one, as all his cars before were second hand.
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And that's where The Old Girl came in...
A local Omani sheikh decided he wanted a saab 900 turbo. Oman in those days was an emerging oil-rich country, and infrastructure etc was still in it's infancy. As a result there were few car dealerships, and they tended to sell more than one brand.
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Shanfari Automotive was Oman's only Saab dealership, but also sold Fiats, Kenworth trucks and was about to start selling Lamborghinis.
The sheikh wanted an exact specification of features on his turbo, and the car he described simply didn't exist. As a result, Saab in Sweden agreed to hand build the exact vehicle he wanted, which would take more time, and included just about every option on offer at the time, some of which that were rare on even high end vehicles back then. Of course this took time.
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The gentleman would occasionally drop by the dealership to ask where his car was, to be told it was still being made, or still on the boat on it's way from Sweden. He grew bored of waiting, and one day when he popped in he saw an unusual new car in the showroom. He asked what it was. "A Lamborghini Countach, sir" his response was "ok, forget the Saab, I'll take that instead".
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So it was that the 900 turbo arrived in the showroom with no buyer after all. My dad saw the brand new turbo in the showroom and knew he had to own it. He was on his desert rotation the next week so sent my mum to pick it up instead once they had the funds from the bank. I still remember admiring her on the showroom floor, I was in love, even as a little kid.
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In 1988 we left Oman and flew her back to England. I remember the road trip down south from our home in County Durham in the old brown 900GL to Heathrow to pick her up from the airport, and even the hotel we stayed at, which is now the Holiday Inn near Harmondsworth, which is near where I live now.
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From then on the car that would eventually become known as "The Old Girl" was kept garaged, and meticulously maintained - my granddad taking over maintenance duties while we were still living abroad for most of the year, so she was only driven a couple of months a year.
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My dad even demolished the old garage and custom designed a brand new, bigger one especially for her, which was double skinned, insulated and even centrally heated.
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In about 2004 my parents sold the house and moved to France. A friend promised to keep The Old Girl in his garage until they were ready to have her sent over, but unfortunatley he didn't, and she was parked under a tree on a farmyard for the next 4 years.
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My parents asked me to retrieve the car, get her MOT'd so my sister could borrow her for a couple of weeks, and then drive the car out to them in France. That was when I found out how she had been kept. I was furious and cried my eyes out when I saw her. She was covered in moss and algae, and had spots of rust starting on almost every panel, although luckily her underside was solid thanks to her regular waxoyl treatments previously.
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I had her trailered to my friend's garage, where he changed the tyres and brakes, flushed all the fluids and gave her a service. I had my own car detailing (valeting) company at the time so I cleaned her up, and she sailed through her first MOT in 4 years without so much as an advisory - she's never failed one in her life yet.
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My sister needed to borrow the car for a couple of weeks, and in that time I planned out some restoration to return her to her previous condition, which involved a full respray and some other minor things. I supervised the restoration work and then in Easter 2008 I drove her out to France to hand her back to my dad.
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It was very difficult however in France not just to find parts (it can be hard enough for a classic car to find parts even in the UK), but also a mechanic willing and able to work on her - as most French mechanics flatly refuse to work on non-French vehicles. Eventually my parents found a British expat mechanic who did basic maintenance work on her, but it was not ideal, and they felt they couldn't keep her to the high standards that they used to when she was in England.
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So, in October 2016 my parents handed her down to me so that I could bring her back to the UK and give her the life she deserved.
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The earliest photo I have of me and The Old Girl in the same shot - I'm in pigtails with mum and dad looking at a roadside stall in Oman on the drive out to Tanuf historical site, and you can spot The Old Girl hiding behind the Mazda, just peeking out - I'd have been about 5 or 6 years old at the time.
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The day she came home from the dealership in Oman - you can see her predecessor, the beige 900 GLS sedan, in the car port, while The Old Girl is on the driveway in front of it. The other 900 belongs to our Dutch friend, Govert, who shortly afterwards, bought a brand new 9000 turbo. When we flew ours back to the UK in 1988, he took his to his next posting in the Philippines, then back to the Netherlands, and visited us in the UK - we still had our Oman Export plates on, while his had his Philippines plates on - which thoroughly confused people in rural Weardale seeing them together.
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After having her flown back to the UK in 1988, here she is on her Oman Export plates, while our Dutch friend Govert's 9000 turbo with Phillippines plates is in the background visiting us from the Netherlands, where he was waiting for Dutch plates for his. Neither car had ever experienced snow before!
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"It's FEEZING HERE!" (The Old Girl: probably)
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As you can see, we've always been Saab fans, these are just a few of ours together in 1998 - The Old Girl, the blue 900 GLS (Dad bought it for Granddad to replace the old brown 900GL which we had before and had given him - it had no power steering, so we gave him an upgrade - but when this photo was taken, my aunt had taken on the blue GLS, and we'd just bought the 9-5 turbo, which I also later owned, and sold.
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In Chronological order we've had:
1 - beige 96 (UK)
2 - brown 900 GL hatch (UK)
3 - beige 900 GLS 4 door sedan (Oman/UK/France)
4 - ivory 900 turbo 4 door sedan (Oman - The Old Girl)
5 - blue 900 GLS hatch (UK)
6 - blue 9-5 estate turbo (UK/France)
7 - silver/blue 900 turbo Lux edition (France)
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Here are some of our other saabs through the years described in the previous post
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Me aged about 3 - the day dad part exchanged the 96 for the 900 GL - clutching a silver 900 turbo dealer model (Not a toy but I defiintely played with it a LOT, and I still have it! It's even older than The Old Girl!) As you can see, I've always been a saab fan.
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The top photos were me aged 3 having my first sit in the 900 GL the day dad got it, second hand, in part exchange for the old beige 96. The bottom photos are my niece, also aged 3 years old, having her first sit in The Old Girl, who will be hers one day, as TOG is part of the family.
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To date, 4 generations of our family have sat in The Old Girl - here are my nan and granddad visiting us in Oman for a holiday. Then of course mum and dad owned and drove her, I've been driving her since I was added to the insurance aged 21, and now I own her, and my niece will own her after I've gone, and has already had a sit in her.
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When I say she's unmodified, I mean she's unmodified! She hasn't changed colour - the 155 Ivory just presents a little more cream (similar to alabaster yellow or florentine yellow) in certain lighting conditions or on some camera settings. While she did have paintwork done in 2008, she remained the same colour.
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The only things that have changed are (1) the alloys were swapped to aero 3-spokes for a while by dad, but I swapped them back again so she'd be original, and (2) an easily removable change, is her stereo changed from a 2-knob radio cassette we had in Oman, to a removable blaupunkt radio cassette in the UK, to the retro looking modern build blaupunkt she has now. Nothing else is changed, modified, or uprated.
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What's under the bonnet? Original saab 2 litre 8 valve engine with her original garrett TB041 turbo, she also has an oil cooler and high temperature thermostat to deal with desert conditions so runs very cool (saab had 3 different thermostat options fitted - the standard one, an extra cold temperature one for cars in arctic regions, and our high temp desert one fitted to vehicles sold in desert regions. She also has air conditioning, APC allowing her to run on lower grades of fuel without knock, power steering, and cruise control.
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A few of our number plates, although I don't have any of our Turkish ones here. The top is from the 9-5, the French and the Oman export plates are from The Old Girl, and the yellow and red one is off our V8 discovery we took to Egypt in 1991.
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Guest of hounour at the inaugural RadWood UK in 2019, when Hagerty invited us to be on their tradestand at the show. I had to get some photos of her on the iconic track as well though at the end!
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Apart from being the ultimate Saab lover, Kirsty is also an artist and accepts commissions for digital car portraits, although this of The Old Girl is one of her earlier ones, you can see some of her newer work below:
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Here's progress of her car art over the past few years, from initial learning in graphite, to ink, to early digital, to more recent digital commissions at the bottom.
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Yes, it's a digital painting, not a photo! Detail from one of her more recent portraits, She loves doing shiny chrome especially! If you're interested in commissioning a digital car portrait of your own vehicle - drop her line.
Nice stories Monika, cars also linked to my parents, our car was a BMW 318i Hennanrot, beautiful, i convinced my dad to buy instead of a 900i. Today I own a 900i black that I drove from the north of Sweden to Spain. I keep it as my summer car in Spain. Love to read your story
I just remembered having read through that, there is one omission I always forgot too. She has a “Raised Suspension” (3" I think) for Desert Road conditions
Love you … Dad
thank you so much for sharing our story! We regularly attend car shows around the UK, so feel free to say hello if you spot us! As she’s the only one of her kind in the world, she’s pretty easy to spot. Pretty much if you think you saw us, then you saw us!