This weekend the battle between 5 Saab 9-3´s from two separate teams Tidö and PWR, and the arch rivals Volvo Polestar has taken place. The race conditions have been perfect on the from horse trotting to race car for the weekend converted Solvalla Stadium. Tarmac has been put on the gravek and some more gravel twist have been adden in the center parts of the grounds for the Rally Cross cars. Where we got to see the legend Per Eklund in his 650 BHP Saab 9-3 car. All in all a lot of competition Saabs out there but no production of Saab cars for the moment at least not in Trollhättan. With the exception of my SU Saab factory less then 2 km from the racetrack where I make 99 Turbos, more on that soon here.
In the crowd many familiar Saab faces could be seen PWR Racing Team owner “Poker” Wallenberg, the leadership of NEVS with CEO Mattias Bergman and Communications Manager Mikael Östlund. The Saab museum manger was seen as well unloading a the blue Saab Super Sport Sonett I (the blue) and put on display in the Tidö racing VIP hospitality lounge unde cristal-lamps and fake bookshelves.
It is great to see the enthusiasm from the NEVS management for the racing sport lets hope this will be included in the future business plans. The world need more Saabs on the tracks. Next race is at Mantorp track in two weeks time hope to be there to see the finals and supply You readers with more great pictures and videos.
Emma Kimiläinen Race Driver for PWR in a White Saab 9-3 Combitech sponsored car
Per Eklund to the right 68 year old seasoned Saab Rally and Rally Crosss driver
Two grilles found around the race track after som incidents. Now on the wall of my SU Saab factory.
</a.
The two NEO Brothers visting from the UK they are big ORIO customers.
Mikael Östlund & Mattias Bergman
Mattias Bergman, Race car driver Daniel Haglöf and Mikael Östlund
Nice to see Mikael and Mattias happy =)
Great report, photos and videos !! Super cars , a real exciting race !
I hope that all those smiles mean that the future is secured 😀
I second that!!!!
me too !!
Hi Jörgen.
I know that you and time have a new BMW fan page but to me it would look a lot better if you didn’t slap that website address on photos you upload to Saabsunited.
Just my $.02
Agree with Ove! Take that ugly webstamp away!
The photos belong to BMWB so if you don’t agree with the watermark, we’ll have to remove the photos completely, which do you prefer?
Jörgen was invited to the event as a member of BMWB and not SU. Not once has anyone from Saab ever invited us to any form of motor event! Its pretty interesting that BMWB which is only 0,1% the size of SU was invited instantly by BMW Sweden!…
“Belong to”… Why stamp them at all? It’s not like the camera put the stamp there. It’s done manually afterwards. Jörgen have the originals without stamps so why not use them instead? This is only a kind of childish way to promote your new blog. Please don’t. At least not here…
I’ve got to say, that’s the first thing that I looked at – not the great photos, not the great Saabs, just the huge BMW watermark, such a shame.
Its interesting that nobody has ever commented once when we’ve borrowed images from other blogs with their waterstamp on it regardless of what it has been… but now there is big hostility towards it?…
Are Saab fans so close-minded that we can’t accept things for what they are and just admire the fun things that the photos represent? As with all the negative comments about other brands here I’m really starting to be ashamed of the Saab community. I’m only a new member of certain BMW communities but over there, the attitude is completely different, people embrace everything that has to do with cars and can praise what ever feat of engineering that has been achieved regardless of brand!…
I can fully understand that Jörgen didn’t want to spend the time replacing the water mark with one from SU on every photo, there are a lot of them and regardless he didn’t attend the event as a member of SU, he attended the event as a member of BMWB.
NOT ONCE has Saab, Orio or anyone else acting as an official capacity of the brand SAAB invited us to any motorsport event! But as soon as BMW found out about our new blog, they embraced it with open arms, talk about difference in attitude!
Well, there are many ways to do things I guess…
Which “things” do you refer to?
This may be an example of how BMW’s succeess begets succees by providing the resources to stay on top of things like keeping blogs up to speed. Struggling entities don’t have the same resources and unfortunatley what seem like simple, obvious tasks fall through the cracks.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/auto/automobiles/mahindra-and-mahindra-planning-alliances-with-global-players-like-ssangyong-saab-and-peugeot-citroen/articleshow/41978210.cms
Personally I don’t have anything against publishing pictures from any other blog, it may be BMW, Audi even GM blog. But I have some considerations about how passive the blog was regarding this news. I have seen the other “competitor” blog from a country south of Sweden having published the news together with an analysis. I starting to get an impression that the other blog is much more active in matters regarding SAAB these days that this blog, which makes me a bit sad.
This is just a friendly critic, I don’t have an ambition to edit this blog and have right to choose the content. It is a private blog and the owners can choose to publish whatever they want.
If you are referring to that Indian article I can tell you that its a highly speculative editorial and not something considered NEWS, I just wrote my own editorial about it, please have a look!
I wouldn’t have written about it at all since the indian article is not worth my time, but since it became such a fuss I was sort of forced to set things straight!
LOL. I was thinking the same thing.
Oops, meant to reply to OveS.
Perhaps Mattias is so smiling because he is in contact with that company 🙂 ?
Amazing that one has to stand a trail with laymen here at our beloved SU. I signed in at the race as a reporter for BMWB AND SU. Tim is right in most above. Enjoy the pictures and movies instead of beeing upset over a watermark.
Just to make things clear the Saab management liked my new car and so do I. We had a nice conversation on performance cars and got involved with Håkan Mattson car reporter at di.se. BMW has leads in so many technology areas. They all hailed the my new M4. That is a car that gives me the next step in car performance that Saab never could. Saab has been in that lead twice as I see it. in 1978 with the 99 TURBO and in 1985 with the 9000 TURBO. After that SAAB has lagged behind the big players. The M4 is a world class sportscar with amaziing performance and design. Lets hope that this model will become a “benchmark” car for future SAABs from Trollhättan.
As for now I will ramp up the production line in the SU Car Factory in Stockholm with two 99 Turbos to be completed.
Guys please cut the crap on where TIm´s and my hearts are in the automotive world.
It is in our common birthplace TROLLHÄTTAN Period!
The pictures are great. Try putting a drop of red paint on a black canvas and see where your eyes go to.
Just a thought.