Step one: Find a SAAB.  OK there are a few around to choose from, lets pick the 9-5 for gobbling up some pavement. Step two: Put the seats down and load an entire show worth of things in back. Step three: Drive 15 hours from Windsor, CT to Lexington Kentucky for the 2015 SAAB Owners Convention!

In attempt to most effectively cover all geographic bases, the SAAB Club of North America moves the show to a different city every year.  Last year, we were reporting from Bend, Oregon, and the year before that the convention was held outside of Albany, NY.  This is to make sure all SAAB owners get a convention from time to time.  The funny thing is that even though the shows are in drastically different places, a few familiar faces always seem to show up.  We are proud to be some of those familiar faces!

Lexington, Kentucky is an interesting choice for the 2015 SAAB Owners Convention.  This is mostly due to the fact that once we were out of New York, we didn’t spot a SAAB until we were rolling into the parking lot at around midnight on Thursday.  I suppose this is due to amount of annual snow fall in an area being generally congruent to total SAAB sales.

That brings me to the weather in Lexington, which was OK underneath our big white eEuroparts.com tent.  However, in the sun, it seemed that if we dropped an ice cube when refilling our free-water cooler, it evaporated before it hit the pavement. Hot hot hot.  At least we could go inside the resort convention center from time to time and watch one of the seminars, or remember the recently departed Mr. SAAB Erik Carlsson via vintage racing footage playing in one of the rooms.

Regardless, a large amount of SAABs still managed to make it, with license plates indicating road trips from as far as Texas and Wisconsin.  The largest showing was in the Classic 900 category, with a fair amount of newer generation SAABs as well.

The heat is not exactly the ideal conditions for many of the older SAABs, which acted more like panting St. Bernards than a well adapted automobile.  One of these cars included one that we thought did not receive enough recognition for what it was, so I’ll highlight it now.  This 1955 SAAB 92B Deluxe is one of only a small handful that ever made it into the states because it was built before they even started importing them.  Based on the Ursaab, the first SAAB prototype (which looked more like one of the aliens from the movie “Batteries Not Included” than a modern car), this 92 had some notable features.

The body is stamped out of a single piece of sheet metal.  The doors and other various parts were cut out after the fact.  This allowed it to have a surprisingly low aerodynamic drag coefficient for the time.  The car is powered by a two cylinder, two-stroke engine that produced just enough power to propel the car, and a few passengers.  Suicide doors.  The engine lacked a water pump, instead relying on convection to pump coolant to the radiator.  Do not plan on waiting in traffic with this car.  Kudos to the owners, who put on a fantastic seminar on SAAB convertible top maintenance and care.

Other notable cars include Jack Lawrence’s expertly built SAAB Sonnet, currently campaigned in SCCA by Ron Wilcox.  There was also a SAAB 99 project that is in the process of having the engine replaced with a large industrial electric motor.  The race is on, NEVS, we heard it running!

We have to take a moment to thank everyone that was involved in putting this show on.  It’s a huge undertaking, but everything went so smoothly it was quite impressive.  The food was so good we both gained 5 lbs.

It is always a great opportunity to hang out and chat in person with our user base, and exchange tips and ideas for the future.  Depending on next year’s location, we hope to bring all of our race cars out for the show.  Until then, happy SAAB’ing!