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Stay tuned here and at the Saablime Facebook page – I’ll be posting links to all the photos/videos used in this video.

In addition to being my grandfather’s birthday, April 7, was the day he served as the best man at my wedding in 2001. My grandfather taught himself industrial design at the St. Louis Public Library in between shifts as a cook at a restaurant in Downtown St. Louis during the Depression. He managed to turn that self-education into a life-long industrial design career that included designing the lighting on the Harley Davidson Motorcycle factory line that he had watched dreamily as the bikes rolled out of the factory when he was a boy in Milwaukee.

I recently turned over 92,000 miles on my 1988 Saab 900 SPG. It’s always a struggle as I approach a mileage milestone… (especially as I near the 100,000-mile mark) do I keep driving the car or keep the mileage down to preserve it? Luckily I have a 4-mile (total there and back) daily commute – which I split with my 2001 Saab Viggen – so it reduces the day-in-day-out urgency of deciding whether I should protect my ‘daily driver’ or not, but still a person needs a plan and a strategy, right?

Overall, I opt for my grandfather’s philosophy: cars are made to be driven. Especially those we love. That said, here’s to those who preserve them and keep those pristine time-pieces that crop up from time to time to give us all the gift of a perfect, un-aged artifact of our past.

For me, I’ll keep driving my Saabs. The thought of having several hundred thousand miles (maybe even 1,000,000! All hail Peter Gilbert : ) shared between me and my Saab is a lot more exciting to me than having a vintage Saab with low mileage. I also love having my kids climb all over the car and plowing through mud puddles (and even off road as needed), and pushing the car to its limits as a delivery truck, a camping tent, the best place ever to be on a road trip… to use this car as the delivery vehicle to everything I want my life to be. And this includes the continued restoration work to keep it looking and running the best it can after these ‘adventures’ I take alone and with my family.

My grandfather passed away in 2002. Happy Birthday, Grandpa. And here’s to all of the great ones who made a commitment to quality. When all is said and done, true love lives on.

PS. My grandfather never had a middle name. He added the ‘X’ because as a designer, he liked the added balance and mystery it gave to his name. Everyone I knew, forever knew him as ‘Carl X.’

Click here for a great article for getting more of the details of Peter Gilbert’s story.

This comment was posted on the YouTube page and really captures the essence of Saab ownership:
“Saab owners enjoy a uniquely intimate relationship with their beloved company. Beyond mere product loyalty, it is the sort of affection most brands can only dream of, as if each and every customer feels personally vested with the success of the organization. It’s what compelled thousands of Saab drivers worldwide to protest GM’s dreadful stewardship of the company. And to it Saab owes its very existence today.”

Well said.

Saab 99 Turbo in the Human League "Don't You Want Me" video.

Okay, I grew up in the MTV generation and remember this video clearly from my first summer of hours watching MTV, I believe it was around 1982 or 83. Same time frame Flock of Seagulls, U2, and Devo were frequently on. Best discovery of that era was the Clash. It was a trip down memory lane when I ran across a site that showed the Black Saab 99 Turbo was featured in the video.

Saab 99 Turbo – Not for everyone. Essential to a few. I shot this video of my 1978 Saab 99 Turbo on a day trip from Redding to Santa Rosa, California – with a stop in Clearlake – on Easter 2010. Due to family circumstances, I did this approximately 180-mile drive about once a week from September 2008 through September 2010. The upside of this difficult time was the incredible drive through the mountains from Williams to Clearlake and down through the Napa Valley and Calistoga, into Santa Rosa.

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These trips were shared between my 3 Saabs: 2001 Saab Viggen, 1988 Saab SPG, and 1978 Saab 99 Turbo. I shot this video to capture this time in my life that was extremely difficult, yet that provided some extremely special experiences that I will forever cherish. Included are countless memories on these winding roads, feeling the love of a Saab. My kids also love Saabs. They love playing in them, having a sleep-over in the back with the seats down, and taking off on an unplanned trip to end up somewhere special for no particular reason and spend the day hanging out, finding little adventures to take. A favorite experience was returning home after a week or two away and seeing their excitement as I came to the door. They immediately wanted to climb all over the Saab, playing in and around it. Many memories are in my black SPG which I drove the most during that time – trying to keep from adding to the 220,000 miles on the 99. We’d climb in and take off around Santa Rosa, down to San Francisco or out to the ocean at Bodega Bay. That car is so solid. They loved climbing onto the roof and standing or sitting there. I wouldn’t have felt so confident on many much newer cars, but the 1988 SPG didn’t seem to mind at all.

Video footage shot on iPhone.