This is a joke. The author is responsible for the opinions expressed in the text.
I clear my throat and say:
– Every second with a Saab Is a pleasure.
The laughter on the phone is heartfelt. My good friend M understands very well that my Saab V4 had an engine failure. Again.
It’s a starry Friday evening in March. My friend A and I shine our cell phones into the engine compartment. We look up and agree: we don’t understand anything.
But M guides us on the phone like a calm supervisor on 112. He methodically dials in the error and it feels so nice when the voice suddenly becomes serious.
The huge brown 1979 Saab, named after the previous owner Barbro Babs, has suffered cardiac arrest. The engine must be lifted out.
And this is where I put the band-aid: I own five old Saabs that are in varying states of disrepair. I’m incompetent as a car mechanic, but I love my Saabs. Then and there I decide: I’m going to divorce three of them.
But which ones?
“Lilla Grå”, my cement gray two-stroke from 1962 with the nicest round eyes in the world. It cannot be sold. And “Ove” – the Saab 900 from 1986, whose interior smells like childhood. Never. So the black cooling system – a 900 Aero from 1990, owned by a friendly lawyer in Lyon. Finally my 9-5 Aero that feels like new – it’s a 2000s car after all.
The months pass. My pencil sharpener crackles four times. A sales list must be created. Soon.
Finally I write in a fit:
“Babs.”
She just needs to heal herself.
Ten months later we are standing in Ms. Garage. There is a rhythmic hum in the motor lift as it lifts Babs’ heart. We spend a few days with our friend J who came to help.
M is like a quiet surgeon in the garage: meticulous, methodical and with the authority of a general. I am a craftsman. He’s a friend of all things mechanical – every single nut and bolt, and I’m always touched by it.
In the early hours of the morning we talk, shit, wait. Bab’s heart finally begins to beat.
On the way to Stockholm she feels like an unwilling predator. I sit on the brown plush seat. Is this what it should sound like?
But it levels off exactly at 78 kilometers per hour – in complete harmony.
Just one last stop at a pub in Uppsala. A 20-year-old with a mustache jogs forward and asks with a red face:
– Is it for sale?
I smile with my whole face and hear myself answer…
Exactly. Where. Let’s stop this nonsense.
Read other stories, for example n’Jonas about how Volvo released a new car model every twenty years – and the Social Democrats changed party leadership just as often.
