Imperfections

Few cars are perfect, and when sold Saab had a few little niggles that could be sorted.

Here is a list of everything I can think of that isn’t perfect, in a rough order of concern:

Front Wings – These will need changing at some point in the future due to rust. A few years ago I noticed slight bubbling under the paint. The type of thing you can only see if you are very close, a few raised dots. I took the car to a bodyshop, and have had both wings worked on, but now I have noticed tiny riased dots at the front of the driver’s side wing. Best bet for the future is to change both wings, but at the moment you need to be so close to even see the dots, and as the car is garaged, it isn’t a concern.

Brakes – These don’t seem to keep up with teackday use and now, when the brakes get good and hot (hotter than normal driving), they get a bit juddery under braking. Don’t know why, any track time I have done has involved more brake warm-done than anybody else does. Still great stopping power, and everything has lots of life left.

Headlights – Everything works, apart from the one time headlights didn;t work and I had to drive for a while on daytime running lights. Hasn’t happened since. What I don’t like is the poor beam from normal dipped lights. Full beam is good, but dipped beam is weak.

Clutch Slip at full boost – Just a little bit when boost goes really high at 3000 rpm. I think this is just the limit of the standard clutch rather than it wearing out. Best plan would be to turn peak boost down a little, it really is excessive. When driving fast (track), revs don’t normally go low-enough that I am in the peak-boost range.

Heated seat switches – These both work, but for some reason the backlighting doesn’t come on with the headlights.

Boot light – This is disconnected. I removed the bulb after it turned out the boot light was randomly coming on sometimes and draining the battery. New battery has been fine since light was removed.

Boot warning light on dashboard – May be related to the boot light issue . Sometimes upon starting the car the boot light warning stays on. Just need to push the boot a bit and it goes off.

Boot collection of water – They all do this sadly. If it has rained, and you open the boot, some water runs in. Annoying.

Headlamp Wipers – These don’t squirt water (I think). Never really bothered me much. It would probably make more sense to remove them.

My tax-disk holder – It might be shiny aluminium and engraved with Saab, but it is a real pain to change tax disks.

Saab badge at front – The plastic coating has come off, leaving a shiny metal badge. I rather like this.

Insurance – Not really an imperfection, but an annoyance. As I am good and declare everything on insurance, this fast Saab costs more to insure than I would like. It took a look at insurance on a £15k E46 M3, and it was less than the Saab… Only a limited set of companies will insure modified cars.