Saab 9-3 Convertible (1999)
Discussion
As I sat at the pub table last night with my mates I let out a howl of anguish. How could I be so careless and forgetful? The car I'd been watching for a week, helpfully local and solid looking, had ended on eBay and I'd not been there at the sharp end of the auction.
I fired up my phone to lament the fact and show them the pics of the beauty I'd just missed out on. But lo! There were three minutes left to go. I put them on the spot. What do you reckon? What should I bid? It was sitting at £940 for a 113k car, decent MOT history and 12 months of ticket. We decided that we could ignore the Mk3 Cavalier platform, and the not-as-small-as-you'd-like patch of rust fore a rear wheel-arch and put a canny £1035 down with 15 seconds to go.
3....
2....
1....
I'll update once I've collected Baps.
I fired up my phone to lament the fact and show them the pics of the beauty I'd just missed out on. But lo! There were three minutes left to go. I put them on the spot. What do you reckon? What should I bid? It was sitting at £940 for a 113k car, decent MOT history and 12 months of ticket. We decided that we could ignore the Mk3 Cavalier platform, and the not-as-small-as-you'd-like patch of rust fore a rear wheel-arch and put a canny £1035 down with 15 seconds to go.
3....
2....
1....
I'll update once I've collected Baps.
Well, Baps has made it home. Collected yesterday, with my tester-in-chief and long-suffering father as back-up.
Obviously 99% of the time between winning the auction and collection had been spent either scrutinising photos of the car to spot anything amiss or reading all the buying guides and forums I should have read beforehand. I genuinely wasn’t sure what to expect. Less than £1000 is low money for any car, so I had no right to expect a pristine example. This proved to be a good starting point. In essence, I intended to buy the car and it would have had to be significantly worse than the advert description to make me walk away.
On arrival, the car was cold (good) and also completely misted up on the inside (bad). It is definitely good from afar, but far from good. In light rain the seller dropped and re-raised the roof, started the car and did a quick walk around. It was alright. As we chatted, it became clear that this wasn’t quite as advertised though… it was owned by a friend of an uncle of his father’s dog’s fleas or something. Or more likely, since his eBay history is littered with Saabs and his Dad runs a Saab garage just down the road, he eBays the stuff that doesn’t make the cut for the forecourt with some sort of “it’s been our family car for ages” type schtick. The garage style white and blue footprint car mat covers where somewhat of a giveaway too… Or maybe I’m just cynical. Anyway, I bought a car with a pre-signed V5 from a man whose name was significantly different to the reported owner, had a flick through the paperwork, checked the tyre pressures and set off home.
My first impression was, it stank. It’s got a beige interior, but much of it isn’t beige any more. And there’s definitely been some smoking going on. My second and more urgent impression was it needs all of the air removing from the brake fluid. The pedal is awful, as is the clutch. I left a good gap to every can in front. Lastly, its dynamic feeling is akin to soggy Weetabix. Steering inputs require a bit of advanced warning and cornering at pace puts the doorhandles at risk of a tarmac strike. But, that’s OK. I didn’t buy it to go fast, I bought it to enjoy getting from A to B. That said, in a straight line it has a nice 90’s style turbo acceleration that is enough to put you past a dithering OAP, if not quite compete with anything remotely modern.
Now, to take a step back a bit, I must admit that though I’ve fancied a Saab for a while, I had a pretty wide budget and brief for this car.
• £0 to £15k
• 4+ seats
• Interesting
• Preferably auto
• Not ruinously expensive to run
• 1.8m wide
• Soft top
The list ran from something like Baps, through A4 and A5 cabs, E36, 46 and 90 cabs, an occasionally dally with an E46 M3 or S4 cab before sense kicked back in, an i3, the odd 996 tip-cab and most often searched for, an E88 1 series cab, preferably a 125i or perhaps a 135 if I was feeling giddy. My long-suffering father and I even drove three hours to Cornwall to look at an eBay 135i in not so gleaming white. As soon as I saw it, I knew the owner had significantly overstated its good qualities. I have a long list of issues, but I’ll leave it at this: It had more rust than Baps, both rear wheels were covered in wheel weights, the spoiler had been attached using plumber’s caulk and the dash lit up like a Christmas tree after 30 yards. We didn’t talk as much on the journey home, Dad having lost his glasses at some point and I due to stewing about how someone could be stupid enough to lie about the car’s condition and be surprised when I didn’t buy it. The M5, incidentally, isn’t a great place to be for three hours on a sunny Sunday afternoon because its where everyone else is. And the eBay 135i’s dropped nearly a grand in price so far and still looks like a risky proposition to me!
Anyway, back to Baps. The journey was initially nerve-wracking, as every first drive is with a new-to-you car. There was wheel wobble at 55, those brakes, some noise from the gearbox, a little brake squeal, and a softness to the suspension that is not entirely down to the 65 profile tyres. I will say this though. What was panned in the early 2000s as awful scuttle-shake and terrible lack of torsional rigidity is currently a brilliant recipe for comfort on our 2023 cart-track style roads. This thing wafts over potholes I’d try and avoid in my van. Mind you, it’s not totally immune, as one of the 10 spoke OEM alloys has a dent in the rim. It’s holding air, but as the tyres are ancient anyway, the only sensible thing to do is purchase some new wheels. So I have. And a few other non-essential cosmetic mods. Pics in the next post.
Having completed 25 incident free miles, I retrieved mini-Smitters#2, aka tester-in-chief from Dad’s car and sat him on the driver’s seat while we swapped the car seat over and dug out the snacks. He pronounced Baps “Great”, and Christened the interior with crumbs from his Mini Cheddars. Crumbs which immediately disappeared into the melange of human slime, mud and muck that is the floormats. We continued home, stayed dry in an absolute downpour, and I failed to make hot air come out from the dash vents. Or any vents, come to that.
Baps the spent the evening looking moody and lurking outside. All three of us boys kept stealing peeps out of the window. My wife is deeply ambivalent and even a little grumpy. Apparently there were flashbacks to “that f*cking car” aka my blue s
tter - https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&... - a vehicle I purchased just three or four days before the birth of #2 boy. Because I'm a moron.
I tried to ignore the nagging concerns over a lack of warm air, a small piece of screen glass found in the footwell and the fact the excellent looking service book (15 stamps sir) has a different number plate written on the back…
Obviously 99% of the time between winning the auction and collection had been spent either scrutinising photos of the car to spot anything amiss or reading all the buying guides and forums I should have read beforehand. I genuinely wasn’t sure what to expect. Less than £1000 is low money for any car, so I had no right to expect a pristine example. This proved to be a good starting point. In essence, I intended to buy the car and it would have had to be significantly worse than the advert description to make me walk away.
On arrival, the car was cold (good) and also completely misted up on the inside (bad). It is definitely good from afar, but far from good. In light rain the seller dropped and re-raised the roof, started the car and did a quick walk around. It was alright. As we chatted, it became clear that this wasn’t quite as advertised though… it was owned by a friend of an uncle of his father’s dog’s fleas or something. Or more likely, since his eBay history is littered with Saabs and his Dad runs a Saab garage just down the road, he eBays the stuff that doesn’t make the cut for the forecourt with some sort of “it’s been our family car for ages” type schtick. The garage style white and blue footprint car mat covers where somewhat of a giveaway too… Or maybe I’m just cynical. Anyway, I bought a car with a pre-signed V5 from a man whose name was significantly different to the reported owner, had a flick through the paperwork, checked the tyre pressures and set off home.
My first impression was, it stank. It’s got a beige interior, but much of it isn’t beige any more. And there’s definitely been some smoking going on. My second and more urgent impression was it needs all of the air removing from the brake fluid. The pedal is awful, as is the clutch. I left a good gap to every can in front. Lastly, its dynamic feeling is akin to soggy Weetabix. Steering inputs require a bit of advanced warning and cornering at pace puts the doorhandles at risk of a tarmac strike. But, that’s OK. I didn’t buy it to go fast, I bought it to enjoy getting from A to B. That said, in a straight line it has a nice 90’s style turbo acceleration that is enough to put you past a dithering OAP, if not quite compete with anything remotely modern.
Now, to take a step back a bit, I must admit that though I’ve fancied a Saab for a while, I had a pretty wide budget and brief for this car.
• £0 to £15k
• 4+ seats
• Interesting
• Preferably auto
• Not ruinously expensive to run
• 1.8m wide
• Soft top
The list ran from something like Baps, through A4 and A5 cabs, E36, 46 and 90 cabs, an occasionally dally with an E46 M3 or S4 cab before sense kicked back in, an i3, the odd 996 tip-cab and most often searched for, an E88 1 series cab, preferably a 125i or perhaps a 135 if I was feeling giddy. My long-suffering father and I even drove three hours to Cornwall to look at an eBay 135i in not so gleaming white. As soon as I saw it, I knew the owner had significantly overstated its good qualities. I have a long list of issues, but I’ll leave it at this: It had more rust than Baps, both rear wheels were covered in wheel weights, the spoiler had been attached using plumber’s caulk and the dash lit up like a Christmas tree after 30 yards. We didn’t talk as much on the journey home, Dad having lost his glasses at some point and I due to stewing about how someone could be stupid enough to lie about the car’s condition and be surprised when I didn’t buy it. The M5, incidentally, isn’t a great place to be for three hours on a sunny Sunday afternoon because its where everyone else is. And the eBay 135i’s dropped nearly a grand in price so far and still looks like a risky proposition to me!
Anyway, back to Baps. The journey was initially nerve-wracking, as every first drive is with a new-to-you car. There was wheel wobble at 55, those brakes, some noise from the gearbox, a little brake squeal, and a softness to the suspension that is not entirely down to the 65 profile tyres. I will say this though. What was panned in the early 2000s as awful scuttle-shake and terrible lack of torsional rigidity is currently a brilliant recipe for comfort on our 2023 cart-track style roads. This thing wafts over potholes I’d try and avoid in my van. Mind you, it’s not totally immune, as one of the 10 spoke OEM alloys has a dent in the rim. It’s holding air, but as the tyres are ancient anyway, the only sensible thing to do is purchase some new wheels. So I have. And a few other non-essential cosmetic mods. Pics in the next post.
Having completed 25 incident free miles, I retrieved mini-Smitters#2, aka tester-in-chief from Dad’s car and sat him on the driver’s seat while we swapped the car seat over and dug out the snacks. He pronounced Baps “Great”, and Christened the interior with crumbs from his Mini Cheddars. Crumbs which immediately disappeared into the melange of human slime, mud and muck that is the floormats. We continued home, stayed dry in an absolute downpour, and I failed to make hot air come out from the dash vents. Or any vents, come to that.
Baps the spent the evening looking moody and lurking outside. All three of us boys kept stealing peeps out of the window. My wife is deeply ambivalent and even a little grumpy. Apparently there were flashbacks to “that f*cking car” aka my blue s
tter - https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&... - a vehicle I purchased just three or four days before the birth of #2 boy. Because I'm a moron.I tried to ignore the nagging concerns over a lack of warm air, a small piece of screen glass found in the footwell and the fact the excellent looking service book (15 stamps sir) has a different number plate written on the back…
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