This is a real Saab story.
To reward myself for passing the CPA exam, I decided to finally get a sports car like I had always wanted. The one that fit my price range had a few problems, which is what made it affordable. $1,400 and I was the proud owner of a svelte two-seater Saab Sonett III like the one pictured below.
The first and easiest thing to fix that helped with the appearance a lot was that one headlight was lazy and would not line up with the other, giving it a resemblance to the late Jack Elam, a popular character actor of that era you may remember as the deliciously funny, self-medicated anesthesiologist in Cannonball Run.
A mechanical lever connected to one end of a metal tube raised the headlights. Judicious heat and calibrated force applied to the tube brought the errant lens back into alignment. The next problem was a little tougher.
The poor thing was sagging on the right front corner. One scary slip with a spring compressor later, I handed it off to a spring building and restoring company in Houston which brought it back to the correct ride height, or at least the same height as the left side. The third problem was the most difficult.
In the 1960s and '70s, the Saab 96 and the Sonett I and some of the IIs had three-cylinder two-stroke engines. Yes, you read that right. The driver had to add 2-stroke oil to the gas tank at every fill up. In the middle of the Sonett II production, Saab acquired the Ford of Germany Taunus V4 engine. An ugly bulge in the hood provided clearance until the advent of the slippery Sonett III. And that's not all.
When attempting to use engine braking with a two-stroke while descending a hill, the driver would instead be met with the familiar two-stroke ring-a-ding-ding and plume of blue smoke. To prevent this, Saab added a coasting mechanism in the transaxle. But wait, there's more.
When the torquey little V4 with its dual exhaust was mated to the transaxle, it did not take long to mangle the coasting ring which resulted in an unsatisfactory motoring experience. To resolve this problem permanently, the solution was to weld up the coasting thingy. To accomplish that, the engine and transaxle had to be pulled.
A rental engine lift and a good natured wife made it possible to do the job in the garage. A quick trip to the Saab dealer with the transaxle and they welded it up for me. Stuffing everything back in was a little tricky, what with lining up two half shafts and all. At one point I had a handful of grease and needle bearings. There were probably more needle bearings than it needed anyway. To cap it all off, I bought a custom license plate.
Orange and other "safety" colors were popular in the '70s and the Datsun 240Z shared that color as well as the silhouette of the Sonett. People would look confused and ask me if it was a 240Z. It was at that time that there was a popular TV commercial describing 7Up as "the un-cola". The license plate read "THE UNZ". Then people would look confused and say, "the uns?".
My sports car itch had been scratched. When it came time to sell my project, however, not everyone seemed as enthusiastic about the Sonett III as I was. Might have had something to do with the fact it had no air conditioning, in Houston. Ultimately sold it for $1,700. My out of pocket expenses were only $160 so I made a profit of $140, checked one off the bucket list and had some fun.
. The other cars are great too!
