Which in Swedish means Sport Wagon! Maybe. I very well may have just made that up! Trying this again. I did an intro last night and it's never showed up. I came across this place last night while searching for images of a 71-72 Chevelle wagon(not sure if thats what it is was called, but I found what I was looking for!) and figured I'd sign up here! I'm on a couple car specific forums, but they're getting stale. Two of the big sites were purchased by AutoGuide and have been ruined by ads and "supporting vendor" forums. On to my car. 2007 SAAB 9-3 Sport Combi Aero. 2.8T V6, 6spd manual. Purchased on European Delivery and picked up in Copenhagen, Denmark on July 2nd, 2007. The delivering dealer sold and installed a Hirsch Performance ECU upgrade. The stock 250hp is raised to 280 and the torque from 255lb/ft to 300lb/ft. The speed limiter is also raised from 130 to 155mph. After driving it on the Autobahn, I can safely say that 155mph is obtainable. I know the rules. Pics:
For a brand new member your pic display rates out of a possible 5. A pic of the speedo pegged at 155 would have done the trick for a "5". Just kidding....welcome to the madness!
Maybe or did you just make that up? to the very unstale forum. Great pictures, that's really cool ordering your from Europe with all the whisltes. Hope you enjoy this forum, we all do. Just wondering, do you have a Chevelle also?
Welcome! I AM NEW HERE ALL SO and have found It's a great place to find help, HAVE some fun and talk wagons,with great pepole and of course share .I think you will enjoy the ride on this craZy train ,stay safe, stay cool
Thanks everyone! My wife is from Denmark so I actually lived there from 05 to 07. When we made the decision to move back to the US I knew I was going need a car and I knew what I wanted. A sport wagon with a manual transmission. BMW's, Audi's and Mercedes wagons were more than I wanted to spend. I looked at the Subaru Legacy GT Spec B wagon, but they were impossible to find. Plus it was a lot of money for the car. By chance, I did a random Autotrader search for "any make, any model, wagon, manual transmission" and the Saab 9-3 showed up. I built my car on their website, then called Just Saab in Cincinnati. It was deal that I couldn't pass up. $4000 off the base price, plus some money off the option packages you pick and a $2000 check for travel expenses. The travel expense check paid for the ECU. I picked the car up on July 2nd, 2007 and put a couple hundred miles on it just driving around and getting used to it. Two weeks later we loaded the car up and drove to Punta Marina, Italy for a week on the Adriatic Sea. The drive down took two 10 hour days of driving, traffic was unbelievably heavy. The trip back was done a little faster. We left the resort at 7am and made good time, until we started to climb into Alps towards the Austrian border. We were stopped dead for 2 and a half hours due to an accident. We finally got moving again, but the traffic stayed heavy through Austria, but cleared considerably by the time we got to Germany. Somewhere in this stretch I got Eric Cartmans attitude in my head; "Screw you guys, I"m going home!". As soon as the first unlimited speed sign appeared me and about 10 people in big BMWS and Benz's pulled into the left lane and took off. We ran at a steady 90mph for almost an hour, then we got caught in a torrential storm. From then on it was intermittent rain and wet roads, keeping the speeds down. At about 8:30pm we were 300 miles from home when we stopped at service plaza on the Autobahn for some road food. When we left Italy it was 70F and sunny. It was about 50F and windy in northern Germany! 9pm saw us on a rapidly drying highway and clearing skies thanks to the wind. I put the cruise on 100mph and kept it there, slowing only to go through the Elb Tunnel in Hamburg and to take my exits. I was home at 12:10am, averaging 93mph for 300 miles. 1075 miles in 17 hours
Thanks everybody! Why do I keep getting a notice when I post in this thread that says my post has to be approved by a mod? OK! This one posted right away! I'll be back to answer some questions and give some background on how me and my Saab came to be together.
No, but my first car was a 72 El Camino. The reason I asked about the Chevelle wagon is that for years a 71 or 72 Chevelle wagon sat in the parking lot of my grandfathers office building. At one point it was a salesmans company car. Somewhere along the line it was involved in an accident and it just sat there. It disappeared sometime in the early 90's. It was a curious car and I've never seen another one, other than in pictures online. I lived in Denmark for 2 years. I had the Saab for about a month before I dropped it off in Amsterdam and caught a flight to Cincinnati.
Nice first post, and nice wagon, Hirsch! that 9-3 is a nice successor to the 9-5 Aero, which I liked. Was surprised to see yours has a 2.8T V6 as opposed to the 9-5 Aero's turbo 4. Was the turbo 4 an option? (Should be up on these, but I'm just not....) Your 1075 mile drive took about as long as my drive from here in Springfield, Oregon down to our old home territory of Orange County, CA, but it's only 850 miles or so.......don't think I'd be able to get away with cruisin' at 100....... Welcome to the forum...... Marshall
Thanks krash! A 210HP 2.0 turbo 4cyl is the base engine in the 9-3 line, the Aero got the turbocharged 2.8 V6, a sport suspension lowered 10mm and 17in wheels. The 9-5 is/was Saabs flagship car, the 9-3 was their bread and butter car. In 2011 Saab released an all new, completely redesigned 9-5 available with the turbo V6 and AWD. The 9-3 lost the V6 option, the Aero package is now just an appearance package now. The only way to get a 9-3 with a turbo V6 is to buy the AWD 9-3x, Saabs version of the Volvo Cross Country. However, with the current situation at Saab, we don't know whats going to happen with the brand. No cars have been built in Sweden since March and only about 500 of the new 9-4x were even shipped to dealers in North America. Less than 200 have been sold. The 9-4x is possibly the rarest new car in the world. The Autobahn is wonderful invention and to able to drive it at speed, in a capable car, was an experience I'll never forget.
I hope Saab doesn't end up out of production or under the ownership of some Chinese or Indian car company. Not trying to be racist or anything, but would be nice to see them return to their all Sweden roots. Who owns most of the company now? GM?
Victor Muller, former owner of Dutch supercar maker Spyker, and his company, SWAN own a majority stake in Saab, GM has a partial stake, but still owns technology licenses on several models that are key to Saabs survival. If they can't put the new 9-5 sedan and SportCombi and the 9-4x on the road, they have one model, the almost 9 year old 9-3. GM has emphatically and repeatedly said NO to any deals that include the Chinese having any stake in Saab. GM is huge in China with Buick and the new 9-5 would be direct competition for Buick. Saab's last ditch effort, in the works now, removes the Chinese from the equation entirely. It involves Victor Muller and SWAN securing $800m in loans. One of two things is going to happen by the end of the year. 1) Saab will cease to exist. 2) VM will secure the needed loans, pay off their creditors and get back to the business of building Saabs in Sweden. Honestly, I don't want to see the Chinese take over Saab. Simply because they will eventually move production from Trollhatten to China. Then Saab will lose whats left of the soul that GM sucked out of them(sorry GM fans, but GM really mismanaged Saab and tried to make them share platforms and parts with Opels and Chevys). But if the alternative is the brand disappearing like Pontiac and Oldsmobile, I will welcome our new Chinese Overlords.
