We covered the idea.
Now it’s been put into practice and the results look fantastic……
This was Till72’s idea and a bid to support his local dealer. The dealer paid for the graphics and Till will keep them on the car for the next 6 months. A big rolling advertisement for both the dealership and Saab, the company.
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Till’s Saab 9-3x has received the Hirsch treatment and along with the 9-3x graphics, he recently slipped me a note about driving the autobahn and using your brakes.
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I just passed the 1000 km with my 9-3x and since I have had that car, I sometimes realized that when braking a bit harder some cars behind me have a hard time not hitting me. Of course, you can feel the stronger effect when driving but you get used to it quite quickly. When I saw the car for the first time I wondered if the wheels could turn for the brakes fit exactly into the 17″ rims (see pix).
On Friday, I was heading for one of my customers who is about 100 km away from my office. Not too much traffic so I was going mostly between 180 and 210 km/h (damn winter tires). As I was just cruising at about 200 km/h without any warning some [email protected]$$ came over into my lane.
Why do people not use blinkers when changing lanes nowadays?
As I figured out later she must have been going at 100 km/h or so. Honestly I can’t tell how far she was away from me, it all was too quick, but I think it was less than 100 metres.
So I stepped on my brakes as hard as I could. Luckily there was no grass but still tarred road surface at the left guardrail. But as winter is just over there was a noticeable amount of road grit. In the end I managed to brake down to the speed of the other car when I was between her and the guardrail on a virtual fourth lane. My left wheels were on the grit, the right ones on the clean tar, the anti-lock was working heavily but I never felt that my car would go in any direction I didn’t want it to. The [email protected]$$ returned to the middle lane, I passed her with a friendly one handed salute and continued my travel.
The amazing thing is that my pulse didn’t even rise throughout the whole situation, I just felt safe in every moment. Thanks to the great suspension in the 9-3x with quite a bit of help by the Hirsch brakes.
And I’m quite glad that this time I didn’t only take care about the acceleration.
Note: Till’s 9-3x is a diesel and therefore doesn’t have XWD, making this level of control all the more notable.
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