Lance Cole Archives - SAABSUNITED

Lance Cole Book Signing.

December 7, 2012 by RobinM

South West Saab (England) had the great pleasure of welcoming Lance Cole to their monthly club meeting this week.

He came along to chat about his new book and to sign the many copies that our members had purchased.
It was great to hear the stories of how he writes his books. One of our members had a copy of his book about Spitfires which Lance wrote earlier in the year. He hopes to be at other locations, like Swedish Day in May, and is always happy for a chat. The book “SAAB Cars: The Complete Story” can be found on line at many book shops including Amazon.

Classic Saabists Gather for UK Meet

July 25, 2012July 25, 2012 by RobinM

Classic Saabists Gather for UK Meet

Our old Saabs United friend Lance Cole – author of ‘Saab 99 & 900’, and the new ‘Saab Cars The Complete Story (Crowood Press)’ which debuts in a few weeks, (pre-orderable now on Amazon), pitched up at the UK national meet with Richard Gunn from Classic Wars Weekly (CCW). Richard arrived in his 900 Classic Turbo and will run a feature on the event in CCW shortly – keep your eyes peeled at your newstands next week or so.
Meanwhile Lance has sent us some of his photos and takes up the story:

SAAB-AB and Keeping Faith: Test Pilots who fly-drive Saabs

July 10, 2012July 10, 2012 by RobinM

Our old friend and SaabsUnited writer Lance Cole – author of Saab 99 & 900, and the forthcoming (September!) Saab Cars – The Complete Story (Crowood Press) is also an aircraft fanatic. His new book, ‘Secrets of the Spitfire’ is selling fast and at the Royal International Air Tattoo – the world’s biggest airshow, Lance took time off from book signings and sitting in a Spitfire, to meet up with the Saab driving, Saab flying Saab AB test pilots.

Here’s Lance’s take on the scene in his own words and photos:

Daily Telegraph Saab Obituary

January 12, 2012January 12, 2012 by RobinM

Our Old Friend Lance Cole, writer of “Saab 99 and 900: The Complete Story”, and the forthcoming Saab tribute book,
“Saab Cars The Complete Story” wrote a Saab Obituary in the Daily Telegragh last Saturday. It is now available for all to see on line. Please click onto ttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/classiccars/8989929/Saab-the-end-of-the-road.html and take a look. You can log in at the Telegraph web site to add comments or here if you wish.

The new book should be available towards the middle of the year and we will have exclusive snippits for you to read here at SU.

‘Saab Cars – The Complete Story’

September 2, 2011September 2, 2011 by RobinM

A new book about all Saab’s cars from well known Saab writer Lance Cole – formerly a regular features contributor to Saabs United / Trollhattan Saab, and the author of the book ‘Saab 99 & 900 – The Complete Story’ and numerous newspaper, magazine, and on-line articles about Saab, who has a new Saab book commissioned.

Lance Cole: The new Saab 9-5 – now that the dust has settled…

September 6, 2010September 6, 2010 by Lance Cole

Lance Cole is a writer living in England and has penned several books on automobiles and aviation. Saab enthusiasts would know him best for the book Saab 99 and 900: The Complete Story, which is an excellent and essential volume and available for sale at the SU Bookshop.

You can read Lance’s work at Trollhattan Saab here. Or his later work for Saabs United, here.

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Lance Cole takes a deep breath and adds his thoughts

The thing that makes us Saabists is the way that we love our Saabs as Saabs – not just as cars.

We love them in a way that (as proven by some recent academic research) we have a relationship with our Saab badged lumps of inanimate alloy, plastic and rubber that transcends the normal human-to-car relationship.

This also means that sometimes, we lose our sense of independent rational critique, and ignore faults that our Saabness blinds us to.

I know one thing – that when I wrote here in 2009 that Saab was in a spin and about to die (which it was – a wind down team had been appointed) I received criticism heaped upon me. This missed the point entirely – it was not negativism, but a healthy dose of situational awareness. Gladly things worked out differently.

I stand by every over-the-top, gushing word I also previously wrote here about the
new 9-5’s styling: It is a triumph of car design and brand identity and of presence: It is emotive and has a sense of occasion.

Lance Cole: Selling Saabs and the whole ‘Aero’ thing

June 30, 2010June 5, 2010 by Lance Cole

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Recent posts about how to get Saab sales going set me thinking. How does Saab re-establish itself in the market place?

Some of you will argue that this is to deny Saab’s existing profile, but you will miss the point. Yes we the cognoscenti may know all about Saab and its survival, but believe me, there are plenty of people out there who gave up on Saab under GM and neither know nor care that Saab is reborn: We need to get them back.

Earlier this year under a post entitled, ‘Ok Victor, so what do you do now?‘ I rashly set out some of my, and your, thoughts – and it is good to see, entirely by coincidence, that some of those ideas have actually become reality in Saab’s own corporate language.

Getting the new cars and the re-born brand out there, reframing it and representing it to private buyers and business customers, is key to Saab’s survival: No sales – no Saab. It is simple…

In that earlier article I suggested that Saab should place cars with the police, coast guard, rescue services and outdoor activity clubs – and not just cyclists or skiers. And that the business / fleet buyers need to be motivated into taking a fresh look at Saab – and specifically the 93 TTID – it being a weapon they really ought to try, because it is brilliant. Shout that louder someone!

Which is all very well, but are the mainstream car buying public – that is them – not you – who are the Saab enthusiasts, still happy to be on the receiving end of the message about Saab and aircraft?

Are the ‘Born from Jets’ and ‘Aero’ Saab hallmarking, not just a little jaded after the years of make do and GM genetic modification? I mean, how far can Saab take this whole, aircraft derived thing?

Frog eaters love Saabs, no Crapaud allowed

June 30, 2010May 18, 2010 by Lance Cole

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A photo report from Lance Cole’s visit to Swedish Day UK

‘Crapaud’ is French for toad – it is also a Canadian village in Queens County, Prince Edward Island. And isn’t their a band called the Crapauds?

The Swedish for toad is ‘Paddan’ and that was the secret code name given to the development Saab 96-99 bodies in 1965-66.

As a devotee of la vie en France, my south west Brittany based French accent went down a whole load of crapaud with the self proclaimed frog eaters that drove all the way from Lille, north east France, Paris, Belgium and Switzerland to attend Swedish Day UK. They decided that they were not toads, but frogs- eaters of frogs, hence the wonderful rally style plates on the front of their cars identifying them all as ‘Le convoi des mangeurs de grenouilles’. A convoy of frog eaters then – because grenouille is froggy for frog.
Frog is very nice baked in garlic and olive oil with spices, red wine is needed. sorry I digress…

So the frog eaters turned out in force bringing a range of lovely classic 900s and Dimitri – he of the car model company brought his Swiss registered 99 two door, circa 1969. Ettiene (he of the SaabHuy blog) arrived in an ex-UK right hand drive 99, which seemed odd until you thought of Belgian beer….

The lads from Saabsportclub France – they who organised that fantastic Saab show and photo opportunity at the French air and space museum – also arrived but sadly without the Viggen fighter that they acquired for their event earlier this year.

Anyway, despite Crapaud British weather, Swedish Day UK turned out well this year and of notice was the dearth of NG900s and 9-3Mk1s. Instead, there was a sea of 96s, 900 Classics and a handful of exquisite 99s – right back to two 1969 cars and the black be-striped, full bore rally spec 99 mega turbo owned by Julian Davies – voted ‘peoples choice’ winner by Swedish Day visitors.

We had a real 96 and 99 fest- a whole squadron of 96s lined up for photo-love bombing. The Saab – Fiat love child the 9000 turned out too – still looking good all these years on and with a strong following.