Well, after two weeks i think I can give a reasonable overview of my new car, the executive summary being: You can tell GM has taken over at SAAB.
Overall the car is good and drives well and in general is a good car, however the devil is in the detail and you can tell that SAAB is no-longer its own boss and it is the little things which show. I’m talking about detail fit and finish such as the front grill and the door mirror switch plates being a little loose in thier mountings, the water bottle filler pipe not being held securely and the fact that the fuel filler cap is not tethered. The old 9-3 used GM switch gear but you could see that the engineering around it was good and there had been no corners cut, I can see too many cut corners in the current model and penny pinching (such as making the warning triangle an optional extra and not having a specific storage area for it) and all this on a car in the “luxury saloon” market. It just feels like unnecessarily sloppy engineering.

SAAB is not the marque it used to be.

For today’s walk I first drove over to Church Cove, which is about 2 miles from here as the crow flies but about 9 miles by road, and parked in the  National Trust car park. I then marched northwards along the coast path past Gunwallow Fishing Cove and right up to Looe Bar. I stopped in the Gunwallow beachside cafe, which turned out to be based in someone’s conservatory and got rather ripped off.. £3 for a glass of orange juice!

Still, it was a very nice walk and took me about two and a half hours in total.

Upon return I found that a nasty sea gull had bombed my car so after dinner I had to wash down the car again. Grrr… 🙂