about Saabs

Our family history with Saabs goes back to the early 1960s when my uncle bought the first Saab that we'd seen. It was probably a Model 96, a three-cylinder, two-stroke critter.
It was also the first car that I drove. I don't remember all of the details, but we (my uncle and I) were at some activity on the town common in St. Albans, Vermont, where they lived. My uncle realized that he needed something from home, about a mile away. He tossed me the keys and told me to go get whatever it was. I was, at most, 14. Somehow, I managed to get there and back with me, the car, and the town intact. The car had a three-speed standard shift on the column and an elegant feature calle a free-wheeling clutch that I wouldn't appreciate until much later, when I'd drive later Saabs at highway speeds.

The two-stroke engine required that you mix oil with the gas, much as you'd do with a chain saw now. In the 70s, they offered an automatic oil mixer. You filled a reservior with oil and it fed the right amount with the gas into the carburetor. It worked great until it didn't, as I found out when my engine seized as I was driving down Route 2 one day.
I've owned four Saabs and driven lots more. They were wonderful, quirky cars with great performance and even better safety. Jan has flipped a couple of 'em and walked away. Adam drove one around the country.
A car that, at one time, could be fixed with an adjustable wrech, screwdriver, and, on bad days, a hammer or crowbar, became expensive to fix, particulary as they became more complex machines in the 80s.
As the 80s ended, so did Saab. GM purchased a 50% share and, being even more clueless about sporty sedans than they were about domestic wheeled-boxes, began to design the Saab to death.
Fast forward, we learn that GM plans to jettison Saab, which might be a good thing, giving the car company a chance to return to Swedish ownership and to find its DNA again.

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Notes:

• Wikipedia has the best historical overview of Saab automobiles. The official Saab USA site, emblematic of a lot of what's wrong with the car and the industry, is loaded with Flash gimmickry and little content.
  
• If you have an old Saab, maybe you'll want to turn it into a sauna.
• Here's a story  about the first Finnish-made automobile, the Saab Valmet and its director general, Olavi J. Mattila: Shared fates - Saab and Olavi J. 
• The following Saab models made Consumer Reports' list of used cars to avoid (CR subscription required): Saab 9-3 '03-06; 9-3 convertible '00, '03-04, '06; 9-5 '99-05.
  Additional note - GM vehicles account for nearly half of CR's list of the "Worst of the Worst" list for the last decade. (Thankfully, Saab didn't make this list.)