About

Who

My name is Ryan and I grew up in the small town of New Salem, located in Western Massachusetts, USA which had a population of roughly 800 people, which is the 4th largest landwise in the state and combined with the largest reservoir known as the Quabbin Reservoir, which supplies water to the folks in the Boston, Massachusetts area.

My Mother and Father both owned SAABs before such as the SAAB 96 mentioned previously to the SAAB 99, but my connection was not an immediate continuation of ownership and enthusiasm by default, but more of a restart to the family’s Saab affliction.

When

Summer of 1996

It was while living in this town when I received my driver’s license at the age of 16 and a half, when I was acquainted with the only independent mechanic in the town, a fellow by the name of Bengt Johansson.

Bengt Johannson was a trained independent Saab mechanic that lived in the center of my town and only worked on two Swedish makes, the Saab of course as well as the other brand.

In this town, there were virtually no employers so as a young kid the best work one could obtain if not already saturated, were lawn mowing jobs. After saving while working too numerous positions as the keeper of the green grass all over the town, I was able to start seeing a car come into the picture. This would be my ticket to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the United States.

What

1987 Saab 900 S

At this point, after saving a modest amount, I decided I needed to start shopping for cars. The first thing I did after recently being acquainted with Bengt was to ask for some advice in car shopping. To my initial surprise, he suggested that he take a look for me in the local papers, want advertiser, etc. in which I kindly agreed would be the best idea since I had no idea what I was really looking for. Bengt knew what to look for and believed he really knew what I was looking for, and in to confirm his beliefs, he asked me “would these be Saabs or the other Swedish cars”? When he asked me, I recall seeing the sleek looking Scandinavian cars in his yard while he worked on them some weeks before and said, “Saabs of course!”

Where

Charlestown, Massachusetts

I recall that no more than a week went by, until I received a phonecall from Bengt to find out that he had located which was what he believed was a good car at a good price in Charlestown, Massachusetts. We had to act fast, as the seller indicated that there were other buyers that were interested and may even be there that Saturday morning as well. That weekend we all headed out there together, me, my Mother, my Brother and Bengt to see and inspect this car. Upon our arrival we noticed that there was an individual walking down the same sidewalk we were as though they were headed to the same building to meet the seller, so I decided to start sprinting (thankfully I did track last season in High School), and was first to knock on the front door. I immediately realized that my decision was a smart decision as I now had first dibs on the Saab and the individual I suspected was was now second in line. This secured our opportunity to purchase, so the meet and greet began.

Why

Strong Recommendation by my Saab Mechanic

This Saab was being sold by a friend of a friend who was moving back to the Netherlands which is the reason why it was being sold and nothing else. This car was a Gaston-Andrey car, which is now known as Charles River Saab and had an extremely meticulous list of receipts and records since it was originally purchased. This second owned car had 112,000 miles on the odometer I recall and had no rust for the age and the interior and exterior was in mint condition. The price was right at $2,500 which for me was quite expensive considering the humble background I came from and the modest pay I received mowing lawns. This non-turbo automatic 1987 Saab 900 S was what we ended up purchasing.

I had a very big smile on my face following the purchase, during the drive home from the Boston area to Western, Massachusetts that late afternoon.

How

Having a Saab Mechanic as a Mentor, fixing it myself, being resourceful, access to new Saab parts at cost and knowing where the best Saab Junkyards are for used parts.

I have always asked myself, how did I manage to do all of this, buy a Saab, and keep it maintained and repaired?

I did not come from money nor had a trust fund or anything, so how was this possible especially in an extremely rural area far from goods and services?

For starters, it was my mechanic that also helped me maintain this Saab from the time we purchased it. Bengt acting as a mentor and fatherly figure, first introduced me to the idea of “do it yourself” or D.I.Y. work. I recall the first task I was asked to do was to A) Locate B) Acquire C) Test and D) Install a new or pre-owned motorized Saab antenna, ultimately replaced the non-original equipment antenna that came on the car.

I think that the second project I had was to replace the brake rotors and pads while inspecting the calipers as well. The same process continued for me as how I would go about locating “proper” parts, how I would acquire them, how I would test them to make sure they arrived in good shape and to finally install them the correct way using the right tools.

The Do-It-Yourself projects started to become second nature for me under Bengts close supervision and watchful eyes. These projects furthered my thinking and ultimate appreciation for Saab engineering, servicing and knowledge base. It was over time that as I continued to do projects both with Bengt as well as on my own in my own small garage (pictured above), that I began to place Saab on a pedestal touting them as an intelligent company that put great thought into their products.

I can remember doing work on my Saab by myself some years after working with Bengt when I started using the phrase “I’m going to do it the Saab way, the right way” and from then on I respected the “process” and gained significant confidence in not only my ability to maintain the car, but the mechanical, electrical and structural integrity of the car.

Not only did Bengt provide me good mentorship in helping me to help myself when it came to maintaining my Saab, but he also helped me get an account at the same company where he was able to purchase less than cost, brand new Saab original equipment parts. This resource was economically critical for the work that I continued to do myself, given that I was never in a financial state to pay full retail prices for Saab parts. The combination of knowledge of how to do-it-yourself, immediate access to parts combined with the priceless mentorship I was provided by Bengt, early-on, enabled me to continue my ownership which ultimately led to me developing a true passion for Saab.

For these resources, knowledge, patience, guidance and assistance, I am forever grateful for Bengt helping me to firmly plant the seed that blossomed into a strong appreciation and level of enthusiasm for Saab.

Since that time, I have made it my mission to obtain a versatile experience as a Saab owner and enthusiast through positions such as a sales representative, service technician and parts & accessories reseller.

Having lived in both New England, U.S.A. as well as Sweden, two locations one could refer to as having quite possibly the most numbers of Saab Owners and Saab Automobiles in the world. He believes he is fortunate to have taken advantage of the opportunities those experiences have afforded him to learn more about the Saab automobile and demographic in a global sense.

My most memorable and probably largest accomplishment has been the founding and running of a Saab Owners Club in Saab’s largest region of the United States, New England by forming the New England Saab Association in 1997, with the club officially launching in 2000. This position allowed me to explore the areas of leadership, event planning, marketing & advertising and public speaking and getting to know the Saab community at a very personal level.

I now run this independently managed promotional website for the Saab brand, the Saab History website. The Saab history website focuses on promoting the Saab Automobile through the use of a variety of media from the communication of current writeups and press releases to vintage advertisements on television that best represents Saab’s past & present history.

My most recent accomplishment involves being invited as a journalist as a result of starting Saab History, involved being flown out to San Diego by Saab Cars USA, to cover the launch of the Saab Automobile USA 60th Anniversary launch program in February earlier in 2007.

My second accomplishment involved being designated as the Subject matter expert for the Saab Automobile brand for General Motors, globally as indicated on the GMnext website.

I believe that these experiences continue to demonstrate my ability to work in varied relevant environments as well as having the necessary professional background and experiences needed for this current position as historian for Saab History.

I began Saab History in Washington, D.C. in August of 2006, and it has now just passed its two-year anniversary now that I reside in New England.

Since the acquisition of my first Saab, a white 3-door 900, I have with the support of my fiancee, acquired and recently restored a white 3-door 900 titled the “1992 Saab 900 Turbo Project“.

Today, I enjoy running the Saab History to educated and promote the Saab Automobile, worldwide here in New England, USA.

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About the Project:

The Saab History project is an independantly founded and managed grassroots awareness campaign that officially began in the fall of 2006. The objective of the ongoing project is to educate people through the viewing of the history of Saab, Saab Automobile, Aerospace and other relevant industries through written, photographic and audio/ visual content consisting of Saab’s past and present and future.

The believed benefit of this promotional site for individuals, whether they are current or prospective Saab owners, through the viewing of these films, is having a single source of information in order to gain a wide appreciation and deep understanding in a way that one could only do otherwise by scouring the internet, finding and reading through rare saab books and other such sources in print and photography.

Here is a timeline of when this project first began:

2005

On 14 June 2005, a domain name was registered as saabvideos.com

Shortly thereafter, the Saab Videos project began. The Saab video project was and still is an independantly founded and managed grassroots awareness campaign intended to A) Promote the Saab brand, B)Educate individuals through the viewing of the history of the Saab Automobile through video content consisting of Saab’s past and present.

The simple web page video listing known as www.saabvideos.com was officially launched as a mere listing of Saab videos in a chronological format, following the acquisition of that the domain.

With some light advertising and marketing for the videos project in Nines Magazine and elsewhere, the word got out and many individuals throughout the world began mailing original videocasettes, DVDs and other media for me to convert and upload to the site. The videos received, consisted of hundreds of individual videos that I have logged countless man hours in converting and making available. Initially I had these videos hosted on our site, but due the word getting out as quickly as it did, our bandwidth got eaten up so quickly that the site went down every month like clockwork because of all of the downloading. Fortunately, google videos came about, then youtube at the best possible time, and we now have been able to have these videos hosted on their servers thus removing the bandwidth limitations while also making the viewing experience much easier for everyone.

2006

The video submittals after some time, began to slow down to a point of very little content coming in that being either new or old, so I decided to brainstorm of a way to reinvigorate the submittals of video content. It seemed clear that in order to obtain more content for such a DVD, I needed to reach out to a larger audience to source the content for the project. The idea of integrating the existing videos listing into a web blog format to reach out to the global Saab community and act as an “engine” in obtaining such content appeared to be the most logical direction that the project needed to take. The new site went live in August of 2006.

With the growth in not only the video content, but writeups, photography submittals, audio samples, books, catalogs and the promotion of scale models, I realized that site needed a name that reflected more than just videos, thus the domain name saabhistory.com was acquired and reflected on the site on October 31st, 2006, thus Saabhistory.com was officially launched.

2007

Our first phase of the Saab Film project also began shortly thereafter, which has finally concluded with all of the 16mm reels that were donated, converted and now available on the website with the second phase ramping up for the fall of 2007.

At this time, the website continues to serve as a good reference for the Saab community, but I realize that it will still take more than a good presence on the internet to get the quality of videos and other media that this project’s objective deserves. There are still hundreds of videos and other content that this project seeks to either obtain, or convert to digital format and make available. With your contributions and help, I plan to continue to bring the you the high quality, rare and interesting videos and other content that you have come to expect.

2008

The new year has brought in a significant amount of content, material, videos, coverage, as well as sponsors!

The visitors that have come to the site have more than doubled since early 2007, so the need and desire for Saab History is obvious.

Saab History was acknowledged by GM as their subject matter expert for the Saab Automobile, globally.

With new concept car launches, and some new vehicle launches expected by the end of the year, Saab History is well positioned for the future outlook.

In reading, commenting on the posts, viewing the videos, and buying and reading the books, etc. one can and hopefully, become educated and/or further educated about Saab’s core fundamentals, such as, Performance, Safety,Versatility & Progressive Design and foster enthusiasm for the brand. It seems clear that today, more than ever, it is vital to reflect on the past in order to appreciate and understand the future direction of the brand. This idea of reflecting on Saab’s great past has been explicitly apparent in Saab Automobile USA current “grassroots” advertising campaign that reflects on Saab’s aircraft heritage, “Born from Jets”. The hope is that through this web blog, the public awareness of the Saab brand through the availability of the video footage amongst individuals throughout the world, will help Saab Automobile’s future success.

This project, website, and all of it’s priceless content was not possible without the contributions from the Saab Community at large in their time, energy, resources and information. If you would like to contribute and would like some good places to start, you could begin by contacting the following suggested venues:

Possible venues for Saab films & related footage:

Saab Corporate Offices (all countries)
Saab Dealerships (all countries)
Independant Saab Mechanics & Garages (all countries)
Saab Clubs - (all countries
Former Saab, SAAB-SCANIA or SAAB employees
Former Saab employees family or friends, etc, etc, etc.

Thank you for helping Saab history to continue to be one the premier sources of high quality Saab media content that consists of the past, present and future.

Please feel free to contact the site owner for any questions or concerns that you may have at info ( at ) saabhistory (dot) com

- Editor at Saab History

The site www.saabhistory.com and www.saabvideos.com, is owned and managed independently from Saab Automobile, GM and any other affiliates.

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