T h o u g h ts f r o m T h e Ma n S h e d
Happy Valentine’s Day, Old Girl You could say she was my first true love.
Oh, sure, there were other girls I liked well enough. But this girl was different. Still is. Special, you might say. So special, really, that a year after I got married, my wife let us go ahead and carry on our thing. A thing that has been going on in plain sight now for 26 years. It’s a thing with my black 1987 Saab 900S. My Valentine.
Twenty-seven years old when I got her, she wasn’t my first Saab. Nor my first car. That was a 1970 Buick Estate Wagon. A hand-me-down from my mother, but a gem of a vehicle. Part tank, part highway cruising machine, she was really just a stretched-out muscle car. Powered by a 455 four barrel, I blew two weeks pay to put the finest Michelin radials on her money could buy. And that old girl . . . she would just plain fly. Not only that, but she was so comfortable, with that big bouncy leather covered bench seat up front, it was like driving around on your living room couch. I had to give her up when one night my little brother got hold of her and drove her into a sand trap at the country club. Busted her old frame in two. Damn near broke my heart, and I could have busted him in two. Instead, we went in together on a used ’76 Saab 99GL. It was all we could afford. And that’s where I got my love for Saabs. I had a hell of a thing for that old 99GL. An unusual beauty, with under-appreciated body lines and contours that only a special eye could see. It had a four-cylinder engine which sat on its side, and a straight four-speed manual transmission. Saab geared their cars to run at high RPMs. Non-enthusiasts say that this is why they are so loud in the cockpit. Nonsense! They’re whistlers, that’s all, and only sing their sweet tune when the tachometer reads about 4,000. I eventually bought my brother out of his share, and he went and bought a Le Car. Remember those things? Renaults. French. Yuck! In 1987, Saab was manufacturing the 900 series. In my opinion, it was the best-looking car on the road in those days. It was painful to give up my 99GL, but I had my eye on this younger model. I wanted the Turbo, but that just wasn’t in the cash cards. Even as it was, I had to get my dad to co-sign the loan for me to get my first true love. Saab made the straight
900, the beefed-up 16 valve and suspension packaged S model, and then the tricked-out 900 Turbo. That turbo was a car no highway patrolman wanted to dance the tango with. It was going to be a stretch for me to muster the monthly loan payment on the S model, but before we finally drove off the showroom floor, I said to put the black fin on the tail hatch. 900s look about half dressed without their fins and no girl of mine was going to be riding about in public half naked. No sir! Coming down the Massachusetts Turnpike one afternoon shortly thereafter, I was pulled over. The trooper asked me why I was going 95 m.p.h. It was in my head to say, “Because I can . . . Sir . . . with plenty to spare.” But I didn’t, saying politely that I had no idea I was going that fast. And I didn’t. Saab had finally gotten around to adding a fifth gear by 1987 and the whistle of days past was now just a gentle thrum. I almost had to move back in with my folks; the citation that officer slapped me with was so high, it damn near broke me. Then there was the time four of us went up over the top of Pike’s Peak in the middle of the night in eight inches of falling snow, and didn’t even know it on account of how dark it was outside. My girl’s front wheel drive was phenomenal, and even with summer radials, she crested those snow-covered Vermont mountain peaks like they were the gentle rise and fall of our own Sandhills. We’ve had a hell of a go over the years, me and my girl. Now, I won’t lie to you. We’ve had our ups and downs, too. What the uninitiated call: “A Saab (sob) story.” My girl is a bit persnickety, there’s no getting around it. And if she doesn’t get her way, she’ll let me know it, too. Her window switches will mysteriously stop working. Or, her headliner will come unglued. Maybe I open the rear hatch, and it doesn’t hold and comes crashing down on my head. Weird stuff like that. So I take care of her. Treat her right, you might say. I change her oil and other fluids regularly. She’s had a new clutch and shocks. And I try to keep her clean. Like any good woman, she likes to keep up her appearance, and I’m happy to oblige. Because with only 88,000 miles on her, we still have some good miles ahead of us. And life just wouldn’t be the same if on a beautiful day I couldn’t climb in, open up her sun roof, put the windows down, and just go for a cruise with my old girl. My Valentine! PS Geoff Cutler is owner of Cutler Tree LLC in Southern Pines. He is a regular contributor to PineStraw. He can be reached at geoffcutler@embarqmail.com.
PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . February 2013
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