Life With Saab exists because classic Saabs deserve more than a forum thread and a prayer. We're the independent home for owners, restorers, and drivers who treat their cars like part of the family.
Life With Saab started in 2017 the way most good things in the Saab world do — with a broken APC solenoid, a laptop on a workbench, and three friends who realised they'd each spent the last decade answering the same questions for strangers. We pooled what we knew, wrote it down properly, and opened a small forum. The forum turned into a workshop manual library. The library turned into a parts index. The parts index turned into meet-ups, and the meet-ups turned into something that started to feel like a club — except without the badges, the bylaws, or the corporate sponsor logos.
Today we're an independent publication, a peer-to-peer knowledge base, and a community of around fourteen thousand owners across the UK, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, North America, and a stubborn diaspora in Australia. We don't sell parts and we don't take advertising from manufacturers. What we do is write good guides, document rare fixes, and keep the conversation between people who actually own the cars honest. Every article is reviewed by a registered specialist mechanic. Every part recommendation comes with a real install story. Every opinion is just that — an opinion, with a name attached.
"The cars are forty years old now. The owners aren't. Someone has to write down what we know before we forget it." — Henrik Lundgren, founder
A community publication is only as useful as the trust it earns. These are the rules we've run on since day one, and the ones we'll keep running on long after the last 9-5 rolls off the road.
No manufacturer partnerships, no sponsored reviews, no affiliate links dressed up as recommendations. We don't take free cars and we don't run advertorial. Our writers own the cars they write about, and our editors fact-check torque figures against the workshop manual — not the marketing brochure.
Editorial integrityEvery restoration guide is a working document, version-controlled and re-tested when parts suppliers change. When we don't know something, we say so. When the community finds a better way, we update the article. A 2019 guide on a T5 ignition system might be on revision seven by now — that's the point.
Living knowledgeThe Saab community is small, generous, and refreshingly blunt. We protect that by requiring real usernames on contributions, banning drive-by advice on safety-critical fixes, and holding a waiting list for new forum members. It's slower. It works.
Community-ledWe're a small team and we like it that way. The site is funded by member contributions, a quarterly print zine, and a couple of well-placed merch drops. No investors, no exit strategy.
We're four full-time, a handful of regular contributors, and a long list of forum members who turn into occasional fact-checkers. Everyone here owns at least one Saab. Most of us own three.
Former Saab technician turned writer. Owns four 900s, a 9-5 Aero, and a workshop that smells of two-stroke. Edits everything that goes on the site.
Specialist in pre-1993 900 chassis and the famously fiddly DI cassette. Runs our restoration video series and is responsible for at least three of the longer guides in the library.
Maintains our cross-reference parts database and the UK meet-up calendar. Drives a 9-3 Viggen with a hand-painted Hirsch decal set his partner refuses to remove.
Runs the forum, the member review queue, and the Tuesday night live Q&A. Recovering rally driver, current 96 V4 owner, full-time supporter of anyone who tries to keep an old car alive.
The forum is open. The guides are free. The Tuesday night Q&A is on a 1970s radio mic and someone always has a dog on camera. Whether you're six months into a 9-3 restoration or just bought your first 900, you'll fit in.