More info about Nr 17 in the sc directory: http://9-5sc2012.com/?page_id=382 or visit the website http://9-5sc2012.com/
I’ve been a SAAB fan for as long as I can remember. The SAAB-virus hit me through my best friend in school whose father had his own SAAB dealership. I still vividly remember the test drive we took with the brand new 99 Turbo he had just received from the factory that day. I sat behind him and saw the Turbo meter that was mounted on top of the dashboard spike as we were vastly accelerating. I was sold on SAAB but had to wait until 1999 before I could afford to buy my first one.
Advancing many years and about some 10 SAAB’s later, I read about the fact that many unique SAAB’s would be auctioned out in December 2012, among which several 9-5NG SportCombi’s.
I have always admired SAAB’s quirkiness, performance, reliability and above all its design. The new 9-5 launched in 2010 I just find stunning and when I realized I could get my hands on one of the extremely rare SportCombi’s, I set my mind to it. It would take me almost a year before I actually was able to call one my own and drive it.
This epos (it got quite a bit longer than I initially envisioned) is a summary of the different events that happened from the date of the auction until the day I received my permanent Swedish license plates in the mail. A journey and a struggle of more than 10 months to get a truly unique car that was supposedly “never to be allowed back on the road again” road legal.
16 Dec 2012: The highest bid!
After many nerve-racking minutes and frantically hitting my browser’s refresh button I finally understood that I had won the highest bid and that I had just bought a very coveted 9-5NG SportCombi!
The beautiful Arctic White was now mine!
My blood was still rushing as I received the confirmation mail from auction house KVD.
I understood that the car was located in Wallhamn (near Gothenburg) and as there was no obvious way to drive it to Stockholm myself I had KVD arrange for transport to their facilities in the Stockholm area.
However, many more things had to be figured out: how to get the car insured, but more importantly, how to get it registered?