1. How did you come to the decision of buying this car?
I found this car by accident. I wasn't really looking for another vintage SAAB. I already had a '73 96, but was just mindlessly doing a google image search for "vintage saab" + Texas, and a photo of this car showed up in the search. I clicked on it, and was taken to the for sale page of a repair shop in Dallas. I liked the idea of the 95, of having space to haul stuff, and went to take a look. I really did agonize over the decision to sell the 96 and buy the 95, but in the end that's what I did.
2. What has your ownership experience been like?
When I bought the car, it was running and driving, but had been parked for years. So it required a lot of repair immediately. New brake hoses, new brake rotors, new wheel cylinders. The interior was encrusted in a decade's worth of stale dust. The engine began to leak oil profusely after just a few days of use. I pulled the engine expecting the crank seal had gone bad. It turned out the bolts holding the oil pan on were all just barely finger tight. Somebody had removed the thermostat so that car didn't heat up in winter unless I slid cardboard in front of the radiator, and it overheated in summer too. So I fixed all that at home.
And after that the car has been reliable. I'm entering my fourth year of ownership and haven't had to do anything other than routine maintenance (mind you, this does include things like setting the valve clearances, adjusting the rear drums and parking brake, periodic greasing, etc.) and the car has never left me stranded. I drive it every day. I've driven it from Texas to California and back, and have done Austin to Dallas or Houston a number of times.
It's not an ideal car for Texas heat. It has no AC. The flow through ventilation is tremendous though, and additionally it has a cowl vent under the dash that directs highway-force winds at your feet. The steering is pretty heavy, and the gearing is like that of a prewar car (forgive this brief interlude: 1st has a ratio of 3.56 and the final drive is 4.88:1. For comparison, a current Toyota Tacoma has a 3.60 1st through a 4.30 final, and puts the power out through 30" tires. The SAAB 95 has a crawl ratio off roaders envy. But this also means you can make it into third gear on your way through an intersection.) the big steering wheel is like that of a prewar car, the upright seats and narrow cabin are like that of a prewar car. It is very odd to drive a car which is so contradictory in nature: wind tunnel tested, front wheel drive, rack and pinion steering, independent front suspension, monocoque body; technologically about a decade ahead of the competition, but in general feel and character much older than it looks. And the freewheel in the transmission. This is a one-way clutch (like a bicycle freewheel) that allows you to shift gears without using the clutch pedal, and to let off the gas without engine braking. It's worth its weight in gold in traffic where you might be shifting back and forth between 1st and 2nd constantly.
3. What is your fondest memory with this car?
It's hard to say. I feel like I don't have a definite, single experience. I have a general like for a drive on a cold rainy day or after a spring shower. There's something of a feeling of warming up in a mountain cabin. Akin to watching the bad weather out a window, while the fire's building in the stove. There's a gentle, rustic nature to this car, and it seems more in its place on a muddy back road on a dark day, than it does in on the highway in clear weather.
4. Why do you love cars?
I don't know that I've ever loved cars. If you really stop and think about cars from a purely objective standpoint, everything about them is completely ridiculous. I love machines and working on them. Taking them apart, rebuilding them, operating them. But I don't necessarily love cars beyond that.
I do love old SAABs though, which are a lot like cars. But there are some differences. A while ago I was driving Mr. Regular around in the 95, and he asked me why I liked the car. I couldn't really put it into words then. You want to think of something deep or clever, and I really couldn't. They look cool, they go fast, somebody famous owned them or designed them or raced them, or something like that. But the truth about the 95 is, you have to take it apart. It's so interesting when you take it apart. For instance, the door hinges on these SAABs are wonderful things. Each door hinge has an adjuster nut on it, so you can set the gap around the door. There's a lock tab for the nut. If you take the interior door card off, you see the portion of the hinge that's inside the door. It's slotted so you can adjust the in-out fit of the door to line all the panels up. This is completely unnecessary, but perfectly thought out. Most factories would just have a guy tug back and forth on the door, or shim the hinges, or use a hydraulic jack to square up the door opening to get the panel gaps right. SAAB? They'd just engineer a solution and build it into the car. You'll never see a Porsche 911 owner brag about the engineering that went into the hinges on his car.
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If you would like to participate, just answer the above four questions and submit one to three photos of your daily driver to milhousevanh at geemail. Thanks and have fun!
