In my
Humble Opinion
Despite a promising start, the former project Saab 9-3 has been disposed of.
Since passing my driving test in 1989, I promise you that I’m not kidding when I say I have owned well over a hundred cars – and that excludes company cars. From Austin to Triumph and even Communist Soviet clunkers including a pair of old Ladas – there’s a good chance I have either owned it or had a steer. There is a knack to running and buying these things and it’s called risk assessment. I strongly recommend that if your mechanical acumen is even slightly lacking, buying and running older motors is perhaps not ideal. Readers who know my rambles probably know by now that I do like an old Rover or Saab. The numbers are incredible, but I have held the keys to probably more than fifty BL to MG Rover vehicles and eight Saab’s. Unless you are driving exotic or proper classic cars, you don’t constantly swap vehicles to make a living (unless trading is your gig), what I mean is they will always cost you money. Any second-hand car is, in essence, an open wound that bleeds you of the folding stuff rather than claret.
Editor Martyn and myself have known each other a good number of years now, and two of the CM project cars have ended up passing over to my stewardship. On many occasions I have often been known to steer clear of buying or selling cars to friends or family, sometimes it really isn’t worth the hassle. It’s far too easy for pals to become enemies or members of the family to fall out – sometimes over the most trivial things. I once ended up selling to a close friend of a relative a tidy Vauxhall Vectra for barely more than what it owed me due to my Uncle’s pressure to do so. Not only did I make next to nothing but after a short while, the Vectra became more unreliable than a local politician and with more peer pressure almost made me offer some kind of unlimited cover warranty… with breakdown cover thrown in too. So, like I have just said, friends and family members may well seem like a bet, but boy can it turn round and bite you on the behind – despite your transparency or honesty.
PAS explosion
Ed and myself are big and wise enough to fully understand the risks, so the first project car I took on, as many will remember, was the Copperleaf Red Rover 75 Connoisseur SE 2.0 V6.
Overall, that one was a joy to own – although it wasn’t all plain sailing to start with. There were a couple of water leaks to fix including one that kept the SRS warning light on owing to two inches of water sloshing around under the carpet, and latterly, the power steering pump quite literally exploded showering the engine bay, the whole nearside front suspension and my driveway with PAS fluid. Apart from those hiccups mentioned, the car never missed a beat and was a sheer joy to effortlessly trundle around thanks to its creamy smooth quad-cam freer
