Mmmm.

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The SAAB Catherina was a beautiful concept car that was never built, boy does that sound familiar! Just build it SAAB! More info from the SAAB Museum about the Catherina:

[www.saabmuseum.com]

High definition digital picture of the SAAB Catherina:

[www.flickr.com]

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Consider this peer pressure.

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I remember seeing a whitish one near either Henniker or Hillsboro, NH a number of years ago and it was wicked cool.

This from a SoCal boy. It was also where I saw my first Honda Z600 (the car) and was puzzled to hell as to what the hell it was. It took me a number of years to figure out what that "shrunken 240Z" was.

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The Sonnet is 50% more quirky than your average Saab of the early 70's, and that says a lot.

Very cool.

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Quirky car made by quirky people in a quirky country...

V4 engine, ignition between the seats, origami styling, but it all just WORKS!

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Turbo power? Manual pop up headlights?

God, as if there were a choice other than to buy the Opel and pop in an 8-track of Kraftwerk!!

Sure, "WORLD CLASS" T-5 is decidedly vague, but how can you resist?

The problem is you're a bit short on cash, but you offer the guy 20 cases of PBR, and he lets you cart off the Opel GT.

With the GT hitched up to the bumper-ball towhitch on your 1986 E-150, you tow the GT home to Southern CA. Luckily for you, the car is now old enough that it's SMOG EXEMPT. (for those of you not living in CA, you don't understand)

You pop the hood. There it sits, MOST of a 2.3 SVO block.

But hey, you live in Southern CA. You quickly cruise over to pick your part, and between the Anaheim, Wilmington and Riverside yard, you manage to scavenge together an entire top end from a Thunderbird Turbocoupe, a very dismantled Mustang SVO and a big helping of parts from a Merkur XR4Ti.

As you begin wrenching on the car, you have this unbearable craving for schnitzel, and you break free of the car long enough to grill up a few bits of meat in tube form and imbibe a few cans of German imported lager.

As the days begin to pass, you begin grow a beard, and much to your neighbors annoyance, you find that Blumchen's "Heut ist mein tag" and "Bicycle Race" tracks work really well to motivate you to keep wrenching at 11 at night.

Your diet consists almost entirely of meat in tube form, chocolate and Lienenkeugel's honey weiss, and your musical tastes, which were already skewed heavily into electronica, have veered sharply off into Euro-rave happy hardcore territory mixed with the trance of Johan Gielen mixed in here and there-- and you've suddenly become fascinated by the mexican kids down the street in their Chivas jerseys playing football-- I mean, Soccer.

Ja, with a few weeks of wrenching on the Opel GT under your belt, it RUNS... but it's not finished, you tell yourself.

It has to be perfect.

So you begin dismantling the junkyard top end you cobbled together and begin cleaning each piece individually, and after painstakingly dismantling them, take the head, intake and exhaust manifolds to your machine shop for a port and polish.

You buy a larger Garrett turbocharger to mate to the exhaust flange when it comes back from the shop. You buy titanium head studs, and meticulously clean everything before and after you put each piece together.

You smile with glee as the car's now complete, running and ready for paint.

A broad smile crosses your bearded face and you put your iPod onto your Gielen playlist so you can chill out for a while.

You paint the car in Pike's Peak white, and gleefully order yourself a set of deepdished HRE wheels to finish off your German speed machine.

You can't wait to wipe that shit eating grin off the faces of those idiot Americans driving their non-German pieces of rubbish.

You've got proper German engineering, ja? Engine design from Cologne in the Motherland.

You've finally got everything running right, and with happy hardcore blaring from your Blaupunkt sound system, you cruise to Sunset and Vine. Your gloriously restomodded Opel GT cruises up at the light next to an Alfa Romeo GT-V6. It's some punk looking italian kid, smug with 'Italian Soul' under the hood. You don't need soul-- you have cold, logical engineering powering your Opel.

You blip the throttle, your 2.3 Turbo chirps the blow-off valve defiantly at the Alfa, as if you were blowing cigarette smoke in his face. The Alfa revs back, its 24V valvetrain revving gleefully.

The kid rolls down his window.

"You wanna race?"

"ja, I vill shut you down." You wonder how long you've had the accent. You sound more Austrian than the Governator.

"Let's race all the way to dead man's curve."

You grin.

"I vill show you ze power of Duetchland!"

You see the opposing light shift to yellow, and then red. You begin revving the 2.3, getting it spooled so you can drop the clutch right where the motor begins making boost.

The Alfa digs in, its suspension allowing it to get just the slightest bit of an edge over you in traction before your tires manage to hook up.

The problem you've noticed, is that you may have slightly overpowered what this chassis was designed to handle.

You shift into 2nd, and it's becoming obvious to you that this Alfa isn't stock-- you should've had it long in your rear view mirror by now. As you glance back at the Alfa, you notice a sticker in the quarter window-- AUTODELTA. Scheiße.

You're still on Sunset, rocketing along, getting into triple digit speeds on the rough old streets of downtown Hollywood. The exhaust of your 2.3 Turbo and that of the Alfa echoes between the buildings, the German speed machine and the Italian stallion weave in and out of traffic at triple digit speeds for nearly 8 miles-- gone only four minutes-- and before you realize it, the infamous 'Dead Man's Curve' is looming ahead of you.

You hit your Brembo brakes, biting into the curve-- yet in all your meticulous German engineering, you neglected to bother with brake balance. The front brakes lock up and you begin to slide. The nimble Alfa skates through the corner as you frantically fight the wheel. The tires scream as you lose grip entirely, and slide through the guardrails in a deafening cacophony as the metal of the body is rended from the frame, and your meticulously collected glass shatters, and you black out.

An entirely different path flashes before your eyes. What if you'd bought that Sonnett instead-- visions of cruising your pretty but slow Sonnett accompanied by hot, female Swedish exchange students flash through your mind. Instead of the relentless pursuit of perfection and attention to detail, if you'd bought the Saab you could have been happy living the Swedish life. Complete with ahem, herbal enhancement.

Blackness envelops you again, and as the black fades, you come to in what you realize is UCLA medical center.

Shit.

The reality of the situation sets in, and it occurs to you that with enough herbal motivation, that Saab might be a good alternative.

You know the Opel is gone.

You know that Italy has beaten Germany this time.

But what about Sweden? Sweden doesn't care about beating anyone. Sweden just wants to have fun-- and so do you.

And you will have fun. Once your crushed left leg, left arm and broken ribs heal.

Welcome to hell.

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Always liked both of them; I still have the Saab Sonnet Matchbox I got when I was a kid; I think the Opel is in my kids' Hot Wheels tub. The funny thing about that Saab is it's way out of proportion to any other Matchbox, so the first time I saw one in person I was shocked at how small it was. Still cool.

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