Swedish Sportwagon

It must be three years since I first mooted the subject of Saabs to Editor Martyn and every time I think I’m going to get one – something else comes along! But, at last, we have snared one at what might be a bargain price.

Following the nice, but rather needy Audi A4 Cabriolet, there were three contenders for the next project. Of course, I mentioned the Saab (again) but there were three cars to consider. One was our friend, the good old Mondeo. This would be the 2007-onwards Mk4, a fine car that is well-made and, if maintained correctly, very reliable.

Next up was a Subaru and here we hit a problem. The next project car would ideally be a diesel (the Audi Cabriolet was petrol as was the Honda Civic predecessor) and on reading-up about diesel Subarus, we quickly concluded that this was a bad idea. Whilst the petrol Subarus – both four- or six-cylinder – are generally superbly-engineered in the Japanese way, the diesels are nothing short of a disaster. The Boxer diesel has too many serious problems and whilst we could have picked one up for peanuts after viewing it and hearing it run, there was no way we were buying someone else’s ticking bomb from the