IT was long before the cock crowed that I stole across the threshold into the darkness with a few morsels of what might pass for breakfast during wartime, a bottle of water and a gut plump with dread. The time had come to steer my Saab Viggen from Paisley to West Lothian for an appointment with a mechanic whose reputation for administering TLC to the ever-diminishing army of Trollhattan’s finest precedes him.
Despite reaching the motorway before 7am the traffic was dense and progress irregular, affording me ample opportunity to fret about the amount of oil burning at the nose of the car, the consequence of a leaking oil intercooler (hence my voyage east). Every time the traffic slowed to 20mph or so a sickly smell would enter the cabin and a haar of escaping lubricant would rise up, illuminated by the lights of the vehicles in front.
Trust me: no matter the volume at which you play jaunty Afrobeat in a poorly Saab on a longish journey, you worry. You imagine the car coughing its last splurge of precious oil, the pistons seizing, the engine’s robustness obliterated thanks to an untypical but fatal disregard for the simple mechanics that cause the wheels to turn.
A fortnight later, however, and on December 22 I received the best Christmas present I could have hoped for, notwithstanding the fact I had to pay £420 for the bugger. And for all this talk of a lack of mechanical sympathy, I had diligently ensured the oil level was optimal before setting off, which is just as well given that the aforementioned mechanic informed me upon my collection of the Viggen that the engine had required 2.5 litres of fully synthetic to get back to capacity. Gulp. While he cleaned up the vast majority of the oil which had fled the intercooler and found another home on the underside of the car, even a few hundred miles later my nostrils are sporadically engaged by the scent of hot 5W-30.
While the car was in the garage the brake setup was given an overhaul, meaning that despite having racked up more than 182,000 miles in its 18 years, the Viggen is currently in fine mechanical fettle and barring any mishaps should sail through its next MOT. Yes, the rear wheelarches are scarred with rust, there’s a leak in the boot and the wheels need a refurb, but mechanically it will go and go and go, so long as I stay on top of oil changes every 3000 miles or so.
During my first exploratory phone call the mechanic revealed he too owns a Viggen, a fact which convinced me to entrust the car with him, so I couldn’t resist asking him for his opinion of mine. “My first thought was: ‘I’ve got a slow Viggen,’” he said, prompting – I’ll not deny – a stream if not a river of smugness to compensate for the paralysing anxiety of my journey to his premises.
Viggen is Swedish for thunderbolt, incidentally. The next job is to tackle the rust and give the lightning an appropriately flash new cloak.
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