The Beige Beast

About my car

Model: 1973 Saab 99L 4-door saloon.
Engine: 1985cc
Colour: Ambragul (Amber Gold) – yeah right, this thing’s beige!

My journey into 99 ownership began in November 2002 when some doughnut in a removal lorry decided to write off Reg, my beloved 1991 Saab 900i 16v. Thanks mate !!

Anyway. Being a bit out of pocket and without a car I decided that the only logical thing to do was to buy a cheap clapped out Saab asap! The bright yellow Fiat Cheekychento hire car I was given only served to reinforce this decision.

Three cars appeared on Autotrader within my budget, an ’87 900i, an ’84 99GL, and a rather shabby looking ’73 99L. The 900 was already sold and the 99GL had a towbar so that one was ruled out! So off I went to look at the ’73. As you can see from the picture below it didn’t look too promising:

Mmmmm, nice! No matter. Off I went and it wasn’t as bad as the ‘photo suggested to be fair. It started, stopped and went OK (although I didn’t notice the massive oil leak!) so £450 later and it was mine. Set of Mini-lites in the boot as well. Sweet.

This is where the hard work started:

• Cleaned all the general crap and antique sweet wrappers out of the car.
• Fixed hole where wing mirror should be with duct tape.
• Hoovered out interior.
• Spent half a day scrubbing all the interior trim – threw away manky rear quarter-trim panels.
• Fitted the Mini-lite wheels – car goes round corners now.
• T-Cut – ah, so it’s beige under all that crap.

Also replaced missing wing mirror, fuel filler cap, Saab grille badge, fitted b/w plates and EMS steering wheel. Here’s how it looked in March 2003:

So what's gone wrong?

Most of the common faults have gone wrong with my car so far! I think this is really because it has hardly been used properly since the late seventies (only about 300 miles a year since). What it needs most is using every day – which I’m doing. Anyway, the stuff that’s gone wrong has put me in a good position to write my buyer's guide. On the plus side I haven’t got a lot of rust to worry about:

• The first problem was the internals of the gear-stick falling apart – this took ten minutes to rebuild but kept happening. A bit of nut glue has fixed this for good.
• Carburettor had to be refurbished – cost about £100.
• Choke handle fell off – screwed it back in and secured it properly – no problem. Shame it fell of when I had a car full of drunks though and had to operate the choke with a pair of pliers.....
• Exhaust manifold cracked – got a new one cheap from The Saab Sanctuary.
• Brake discs rusted and pitted through lack of use. New ones pretty cheap.
• Handbrake drums had to be re-lined for the MOT – lack of use again I suspect.
• Clutch went due to leaking crankshaft oil seal – new clutch done at Saab dealer at great expense.
• Engine mounting bracket found to be missing causing bolt on remaining bracket to shear off – Saab Sanctuary to the rescue again!

And here's how it looked in April 2003. Note the black and white plates and AA grille badge - giving it that classy "old codger" look......

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