Barcelona or Bust and/or Back in a £346 Saab

[Three Speed]

I posted the start of this in the New News thread a couple of weeks ago. Here’s what happened next…

We signed up to the Barcelona or Bust Rally in January and my son found this ’96 Saab 900 convertible on Facebook in February. The asking price was £350. The seller was very honest about the car. The only big issue with it is the roof does not work. There are also some dents and scratches. Heater works well, a/c doesn’t. Exhaust is fruity and the handbrake is weak. The cassette player is u/s to I removed the tapes from the car - but all the pixels on the radio display work.

First thing was to hoover out the car and remove some of the bird/ squirrel crap from the hood. I found £4 under the driver’s seat. So now it was a £346 car. I drove it around for a bit – a few trips to work and a couple of up and down the M4. My first Saab.

I’d read these cars have quite bad scuttle shake. It’s true – seems to wobble as much as my Herald. You can hear the door catches working hard to keep the front and back ends together. Apparently, there were 1000 changes made when the 9-3 was introduced. I imagine that included more metal joining the front to the back.

In preparation for the Barcelona  trip – likely to be its last one – I changed the oil and filter (which turned out to have only recently been changed), replaced the wiper blades (because one froze to the screen), changed the serpentine belt (which certainly did need changing) and the rear brake pads (which didn’t). I changed the rubber pad on the key fob. I’m glad I did that, and I can see why it was knackered, because the immobilizer kicks in every time you leave the car – I don’t know if that’s normal – and you have to press it twice to mobilize it. I stuck some black tape on the headlights as converters and pumped up the tyres, including the spare – not everybody did that apparently.

The car came with a Haynes manual and a thick set of Saab technical bulletins about the hood. I did think about having a proper go at fixing it – but several people have had a go before and it’s a major job. I didn’t try lowering it until a couple of weeks before we left for Barcelona in case I couldn’t get it up again. There is an emergency release lever behind the rear seat back which allows the roof to be moved manually. This also disengages a few things that need resetting before it will ever work properly again. When I got the car the back edge of the roof was latched down on one side only. After I put the roof back up, I couldn’t get either side to latch down. There’s about a 1-inch gap – never mind, it still keeps the rain out. More importantly, with the roof lowered the tonneau has nothing to hold it down – because whatever latch is supposed to do that doesn’t. The previous owner had drilled a hole to tie it down with string. I drilled a couple more holes added M8 bolts and wing nuts. Raising an lowering the roof therefore takes a few minutes.

So – that was the car sorted.

[Three Speed]

The rally takes three days finishing in Barcelona on the Sunday evening. We had originally hoped to add on a couple of days to wander about in Spain. Then work got in the way and I needed to be on a plane on the Tuesday. Mrs 3S and I had the option of scrapping car and flying back, or a big drive from Barcelona on the Monday.

The start was in Rouen and registration was on Thursday evening. We left home on Wednesday for a leisurely and drizzly drive there – with the roof up.

There were about 20 other cars. Some were really well decorated – there were two USS Enterprises,

Queen,

crash test dummies,

one golf fairway,

and some monks.

and a tank.

Most of the others had many stickers but some were, like us, quite low key with just the two rally stickers. As for spares we had a roll of electrical tape to mask the headlights and stick on anything that fell off. And some bulbs to be legal – but I don’t know if they fitted any of the lights.

The Friday section was from Rouen to Bordeaux. Along the way we had to find or do silly things as challenges. How I regretted taking those tapes out of the car. That lost us a point. Didn’t matter because we didn’t get many others anyway. The weather brightened, down came the roof and there it stayed. We stopped at the LeMans museum where I saw more old Citroens than I expected. That was a long drive and it was getting dark when we got into Bordeaux.

That was frustrating as we wanted to see the city – UNESCO World Heritage site…

Next day we headed south for Andorra.

All the challenges were photographic. We started to get the hang of this but still only go about half the points. This was a shorter drive and more fun than the day before. The phone’s satnav took us down some lovely little (and I mean little) roads as we approached the mountains. But it got confused and we paid 6 euros for a lonely drive through a 3-mile tunnel with and then another 6 euros to do it in the other direction. We ended the day high-fiving a female traffic cop in Andorra to get a 2-point photo.

The final day’s mission was to leave Andorra and head south for the Barcelona beach but the first challenge for us was to get out of the car park because there was no attendant to give us a ticket. When we finally got one I dropped it into the gap between the bonnet and the windscreen. That was the only time I opened the bonnet on the whole trip. The driver’s door wouldn’t unlock so I had to climb over it. By the time we had all that sorted and reached the start point everyone had gone. No matter we caught some of them up – it’s not hard to catch a Mercedes with a broken gearbox with 4 big blokes that’s dressed up as a golf course.
 

No challenges that day (apart from the car park). And then we were in Barcelona.

[Three Speed]

Decision time – scrap the car and fly back or drive it home? If the weather had been dodgy we would have scrapped it. But blue skies were forecast all the way, the car hadn’t missed a beat and was surprisingly comfortable. So at 0510 hrs on Monday morning we set off for Le Havre – still with the roof down. We were glad of the heater then. About 30 minutes later Mrs 3S pointed to a huge spider scuttling across the top of the dashboard. I really don’t like spiders and nearly scrapped the car there and then. But I put on my big boys’ pants and we carried on. We went were Waze told us to which turned out to include the Millau bridge. I had always wanted to cross that. Fantastic.

We carried on until we got to Le Havre at 1810 Hrs.

That’s 750 miles in 13 hours through some fantastic scenery in beautiful weather on excellent roads. Until then the furthest I had driven in a day was 550 miles in our ’59 New Yorker on the way to Sweden. We were ridiculously early for the ferry so wandered around the city – the second UNESCO world heritage city of this trip. We then lined up with some weird looking pod-shaped caravans waiting for the boat. The roof was still down and we attracted a bit of attention. A Saab enthusiast thought I was one too and asked me to write this trip up for the Saab Owners Club magazine. Actually I think I am a Saab enthusiast so I probably will. This car is so comfortable!

We were home by 0830 Hrs and 12 hours later I was on a plane to Taiwan. In retrospect we should have stickered up the car a bit more but everything went to plan and it was a great trip. 2000 miles, 30 mpg, 0 hitches. We met some lovely people, including some who visit AS. Highly recommended – now, what to do with the car?

[wuvvum]

Yeah, floppytop 9-3s suffer pretty badly from scuttle shake as well...

[Isaac Hunt]

Chuffing excellent.  I've on,y done one Bnager Rally, to Maranello and Back, great fun, really enjoyed it.  

Some of the themes that folk come up with are very creative.  I like the Star Wreck, the guys in the outfits made me smile, brilliant.  

[Wingz123]

Keep it and do another one of course!!!!

Is it an auto?

[sutty2006]

Is this this years rally? I know a lad that did it in a batman X type jag. He’s doing next years in an MX5. I’m hoping to do this one in the 50 quid omega. But 3 days is a little short, usually rally’s we’ve done in the past have been 4/5 days long. Well done for getting there and back in one piece! 

[Three Speed]

This was this year’s rally - no batman in a Jag as far as I remember but I think there are other companies doing the same thing. There was a Ford Cougar.

The Saab is an auto. Very smooth. Would love to hang onto it but would need a new hiding place.

[Matty]

Like a bust record ill say it again. Best cars ever made came from the 90s early 2000s. All that way and back in a £350 car and zero issues! Well imprressive. Great write up as well!

[paulplom]

Great read.

[Twiggy]

Fascinating, thank you.