CWMC Agents Fall for Cool Swedish Models

Edmonton, Ab / Vancouver, BC: Sporting fighter-plane heritage and parts-pricing to match, Saab automobiles have traditionally appealed to cerebral, thoughtful professionals with six-figure tax-returns, Hans Wegner coffee tables, and no inclination whatsoever to take car-buying advice from Consumer Reports magazine, with its dizzying, tediously compiled pages of red and black dots coldly compelling the masses into Camrys and Accords for the last thirty years. Bravo, then, to those brave pilots, plastic surgeons, art directors and debutantes who forked out substantial funding for the exclusive privilege of parking one of these Trollhatten honeys in the garage when they were new; depreciation be damned.

9088: West Coast Agent at Large

  Fast forward a quarter century, several bankruptcies, GM-ification, more subsequent bankruptcies, bailouts, and final, merciful extinction, and these same Saabs are a bit difficult to unload onto a public cowed into a steady, revolving-credit-scheme series of soulless safety-porridge-tins, warm-blanket warranties, and self-parking stupidity. When the phone finally rings, and a cardigan-clad calculator-jockey appears on your front step, you can be sure of a couple of things:

  1) Unless you live in a city with a population greater than seven million, this is the only person that is going to make you an offer on your 1980-something Saab, and,

  2) This unlikely character is almost certainly a card-carrying Cold War Motors Agent.

  Agents 0311 (engineer and Volvo-owner) and 9088 (ditto) were both recently seduced by the intangible allure of the other Swedish car, and both were able to procure pretty tidy examples of some classic, pre-GM Saabs at tiny fractions of their original prices. 
  Agent 9088 has just been issued Full Presidential Approval for his 1985 900, sporting a nice set of 8-spoke Ronals and some obligatory minor electrical mayhem, usually curable with a carefully placed Fonzie-esque smack to the afflicted instrument or gauge. 9088 reports that "All systems are go (except where otherwise indicated)" and is looking forward to an almost certainly trouble-free winter of stylish commuting amongst the aforementioned Camrys-and-cupholders crowd. 

Roxette tapes still in the glove box.

   Agent 0311, no stranger to the pages of this newsletter, has taken the plunge right into the deep end of the chancy commuter pool, and sprung for the 1987 9000 Turbo variant, Saab's (and 0311's) first real luxury model. With enough lights, dials, and buttons inside (many of them still working) to amuse even the most jaded 747 pilot, the 9000 is so far outside 0311's car ownership experience (read: late 70's Jap rustbuckets and an encyclopedic set of haggard 240s) that he still walks past it enviously in the office parking lot before realizing it is in fact his car. 0311, not known for rash decision-making, actually sought and received Full Presidential Pre-approval before making the only offer on this sweetheart, 1 owner unit.

0311: "Where's the choke?"

  From inside the leather-and-walnut confines of his first not-a-complete-fuckpail car, 0311 marvels at the sheer decency of the experience; nary a scabbed-in-with-zap-straps repair in sight, and a total lack of drywall screws or PL2000 Sure-Bond construction adhesive holding on various trim panels, speaker grilles, or un-labeled Radio-Shack toggle switches.
  When asked to comment on the wisdom of purchasing quarter-century-old obsolete turbo cars from an extinct company, the President, in a fairly optimistic state of mind after a refreshing set of identical double G&Ts, was happy to point out that "Many parts interchange with the Lancia Thema, Fiat Croma, or Alfa Romeo 164, so what the fuck could possibly be the problem?"
  All agents are encouraged to check their basements and spare bedrooms for all those extra Fiat, Lancia, and Alfa Romeo-interchangeable Saab parts they have just lying around and put them aside for Agents 0311 and 9088. Not that they will need them.

Almost definitely not.