Le Mans Classic 2018 – On The Way To Le Mans, France
This years Le Mans classic started before departing for France, by again getting the 9000 ready… Mechanically the car was good, had been serviced, it’s just the body and paint that was needing attention.
I had bought a replacement drivers door from Two Stroke to Turbo as the original was bubbling from when I bought it. It was of course white, silver apparently being difficult to match would have meant a repaint anyway. Mk1, or CC (Combi Coupe) 9000s parts are less common and therefore more expensive that the later CS parts.
Stripping the rather nice ‘new’ door wasn’t too bad, SAAB are pretty good at hiding trim clips and screws. They have done a better job than Mercedes with some of it too, when compared to the S Class.
Note the nice spacious workshop, Simon at Panelcraft didn’t mind me working away, I was of course working to a deadline… Only a couple of weeks until I left.
This needed to be hung on the car and I managed quite well, the hidden bolts behind the front wing doing some of the adjustment. The factory would have had quite a sophisticated jig to align it. I didn’t, but it went on rather well.
You can probably see the lacquer peeling off the bonnet, it always had a speccled appearance and looked like it had been resprayed at some point and had an unusual reaction.
This was explained when the paint came off, the bonnet was a replacement and had the black primer underneath. Looked to be a genuine SAAB part though, I wonder what else had been replaced. The drivers door was then questioned as I always wondered why it had an airbag sticker on the inside when the car doesn’t have an airbag…
Still, the results were great, immediately improving how it looked. £500 well spent.
Some reassembly later and I was away.
It took some measuring to get the SAAB wing badge in the right place… An air con re-gas later and it was ready to go to Le Mans.
The trip to Norfolk was fine, the car running very well, a fuel stop in Kings Lynn and I was soon on my overnight stop at my mother’s with nearly a full tank. I was getting up quite early and didn’t want to have to do too much first thing. A quick stop in Watton to collect Jalopy Jim and we were on our way, a quite uneventful trip, the usual stop in the Medway services on the M2 before refuelling just outside Dover. The SAAB had returned a healthy 34mpg, some town work, open road, traffic and motorway. Things looked good.
The obligatory motorway service stop photo, I was even tempted to use our normal parking space.
The next obligatory stop is the Aire de la Baie de Somme, the rather fantastic nature reserve and visitor centre. This time it was undergoing renovations, so no going up the tower. Still, I recommend popping in if you’re heading past Abbeville on the A16
The stop for night one was again Rouen, a fantastic medieval city with a rather spectacular cathedral. This is another place worth a visit. The cathedral light show throughout the summer months, at night is superb.
The next morning we started the rest of the journey to Le Mans, from the hotel, which was right next to the road we needed. It wasn’t bad though, or particularly noisy. Finding a hotel in Rouen with parking isn’t that easy, this one had a space made to fit the 9000 perfectly.
The next port of call was the lunch stop in Alençon, another really nice place on the river Sarthe, a good place for a picnic.
Then what seemed like hours in their E.Leclerc hypermarket, a place where you can buy a ride on lawnmover, freezer, camping equipment and food… we arrived on site at Le Mans with First Tickets rather nice site. Camp Jalopy was erected and we headed off to the circuit grandstand.
We made it, no drama, no car trouble, a nice relaxed run and some nice places visited on route. This boded well for the rest of the weekend…
Simon
