Categories
Cars Living Saab

Goodbye Saab! Thanks for the Memories…

Sad to read this week that we’re at the end of the line for Sweden’s Saab – as GM failed to find a suitable buyer and decided to shut the company down.

1968-saab-96-v4-brochure-cover.jpgMy first new car was a RED (!) 1968 Saab 96 V4 Deluxe – which my folks helped me buy new from Leif Lindzen Motors in Berkeley. I’ve still got one of the brochures for Summerflight (1969 edition) – which bundled in a trip to the factory in Sweden to actually pick up the car, drive it around that country and then leave it behind for shipment back to San Francisco. Cost (car + trip): $2,770.

Lots of fond memories of that trip – and, I suppose, I must have photos from it somewhere (!). I remember the flight over – it was mid-June, we took off in daylight, landed in daylight, the sun never set the whole way over. I went to sleep and woke up with the sun outside, didn’t know what time it was, look out the window at a clock tower across from the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, saw it was 3:45 and thought I’d missed a whole day of events. Turned out it was 3:45 AM, not PM!