Написано для тиснения на ТСН с целью рекламы себя любимых. Пора, панимаешь, выходить на промеждународную арену. не все ж капиталистам одним столбиться!
Тимур дал отмашку но не имеет времени для коррекции.
УРА!!!
SAABs in Russia
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, although as unlikely as it may seem, these two words merge pretty well, thank you very much. For most of you, Russia has a long standing as a favourite playground for some notorious Mr. Oh-Oh-Seven, as a supplier of natural resources and crappy self-propelled contraptions, whose makers insist on calling ‘em «cars»… But SAABs? You must be joking, tovaristch!..
Still, there is a story to tell.
The first examples of the Sason’s finest – 99 saloons - arrived here for some official duties in 1980, right before the Olympic games. When those were over, they were sold to some lucky individuals. Cars in Soviet Union were a tremendous luxury and were distributed rather than sold, by state. An average person could attain a Lada or Moskvitch or Zaporozhets after 8-12 years of saving (even the cheapest used to cost an arm and a leg), begging, bribing and waiting. For sure there was some trilling and dramatic story of those official foreign(!) cars turning personal transport. So far only one has been seen several times during SAAB fans’ gatherings. According to the last owner, it racked up around 500k (km) and still runs fine.
But I digress. During the economic and legislative havoc, which followed the destruction of the soviet order, it was possible to import a foreign car virtually for free. That is when the SAABs started to pour in. The oldest specialist service has been working with SAABs for more than 10 years now. A bit later the first official dealer appeared. Called Gema, it quickly established itself as a symbol of lousy services and ultra-premium prices. There is a joke, that if you want them to change spark plugs, they will swap a DI block too, or instead of changing timing chains they offer you a new engine.
The SAAB population grew steadily, but slowly. Most cars live in Russia’s two biggest cities – Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. Freakish, love-it-or-loath-it design of 96 and 99/900 made them quite exclusive. The horrible Gema case, which produced numerous tales of four figure (in dollars) service bills, helped too.
Things changed when SAAB made an appearance at the first Moscow Motor Show in 1992 and later (circa 1995) when the Administration of the Russian president, catering the government’s needs, bought a huge fleet of 9000 saloons. Mostly were 2.0 litres, in rather basic form, but they made the marque popular among the jet-set mob. Banks, firms followed the trend.
At the same time several attempts of making a SAAB owners club were made, but none had had been accomplished. The so called clubs were friend’s gatherings mostly without any structure or membership. Those groups almost never communicated to each other.
The real breakthrough was made after the www.auto.ru with TSN-like
Internet boards started in Russia in 1996 (SAAB WWW-Conference followed a little later). People from all over Russia now could talk to each other, and even meet in real life. Visits of SAAB fans from/to other cities became a good tradition. We have our FAQ, picture gallery and a section where people post their stories about places they visited, tales of life and so on…
In 1999 for reasons too complicated to explain here most of the participants moved to another site, Timur’s SAAB page where it now resides.
SAABs haven’t become as common and as famous as, say, VW, Audi, or Toyota and the number of the participants is no more than 50. Probably, because of this we can enjoy the very specific «homey» spirit.
Our writers present an awesome gift, producing really fascinating stories, whatever the subject: mere technical matters, life, women/men (we have several girls between us), computers, participants’ birthdays and births of their children…
Take, for example, Alexei Voronko (aka Alexei) – our guru, whose passionate scribblings, loaded with facts and personal experiences helped many in their choice of marque. He is through his second 900 now, having rebuilt it with his own hands.
Or Igor Stefanov (aka AeroStef) – his totally politically incorrect tales about life, driving and living with his his 9000Aero, overspeeding or road cops’ behaviour will make the dead laugh.
Or our «Papa» – Timur Kadyshev, the owner of the SAABBoard, whose inner knowledge of the Web events is simply stunning…
Well the list is endless, really! And who said Russians are gloomy and dull people?
As for cars, 9000 form the majority, 900 – both OG and NG follow and 99s are fewest.
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