Certainly plenty pictures...172 of them. To bid unseen on it I think a start up and brief on the road vid always helps. With a phase of 3 SAAB's in a row as family cars in my teenage years I always have a bit of affection for them. The SAAB 900 Combi Coupe in dark blue with blue velour upholstery was a very nice car and my favorite of the bunch. Probably a misuse of the word coupe which translates for me as a two door, this was a 5 door ie 4 normal ones and a hatchback.
Hers SAAB's thinking...from wiki
Combi coupé is a marketing term used by Saab to describe cars with a sloping coupé-like rear hatchback. The term joins the European term "combi" (for an estate car / station wagon) with coupé.
The design combines the functionality of a hatchback with the appearance of a fastback. As per a hatchback, the combi coupé incorporates a shared passenger and cargo space.
My youngest had a yeller one and loved it until the hood mechanism went squiffy.
Called it her Bananamobile. Went all over in it. Scotland, Wales, France, Italy.
Lovely car to drive, similar to the 900 Aero it replaced. The yellow one was a 900 too, before they stuffed them full of GM parts and called them 93's
On the wiki article about our whatsthisthen friends ED Abbott of Farnham was a link to the Ford Capri Convertible they turned out...probably as a one-off given the sparsity of net info on the Ford Capri convertible.
Well the Australian Branch of the Ford Motor Company took the plunge in later years in a much bigger way with the Capri, as this video of dubious picture quality shows...stick with it, wonder how many of the proposed 40,000 were built
A total of 66,279 Capri Convertibles were built by Ford Australia. Of these, 55,932 were left hand drive units built for the US market, with the remaining 10,347 Capris, being right hand drive models. Of these, 9,787 were sold on the Australian market, 440 were exported to New Zealand and 120 were exported to Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand.
Yes, I see now. Not much link to the Capri as known in the UK, except for the name. Two seater convertible based on a Mazda platform, alright-ish from the front, but its rear is less than appealing to me. Front wheel drive and known in the USA as the Mercury Capri.
Seems odd. I was always of the persuasion that Ford owned a decent slice of Mazda, about 40% IIRC, and that, at least originally, Mazdas were built from mostly Ford parts.
From 1974 to 2015, Mazda had a partnership with the Ford Motor Company, which acquired a 24.5% stake in 1979, upped to a 33.4% ownership of Mazda in May 1995.[26] Under the administration of Alan Mulally, Ford gradually divested its stake in Mazda from 2008 to 2015, with Ford holding 2.1% of Mazda stock as of 2014[27] and severing most production as well as development ties.
Wonder how that handled being a convertible, I remember my MK1 Coupe 1600 Capri was awful for tail end step out and would also drift on long bends, but looked good in red with a black vinyl roof until it blew off going to Llanrwst one Sunday, the vinyl was just starting to hole and peel by the front screen, I guess the wind got under it and off it went.
Worst handling newer convertible I have driven was a Colt CC about 8 years ago not to bad roof on but take it off it didn't want to handle at all, It would not corner tightly just wanted to drift outwards constantly and any kind of bend and do not touch the brakes on a bend it was all over the road bucking and weaving a real handful.
Best one at the cheap end of the market, the Astra Twin Top although at 1.6 petrol it was quite under powered on hills the handling was perfect you could even brake and reposition on corners without a flinch from the vehicle took it all in its stride. I don't get any complaints from the wife's 308cc either but I think the 307cc was better through corners, it felt less flighty.
Hated the Triumph Spitfire, great on a straight road any corners or undulations you ended up fighting with it to keep it straight, the amount of owners who would book them in to be looked at was incredible after they bought them just to be told sorry that's how it drives by the service manager, but it was a good looker to be fair, we had a green and yellow one in for service on a regular basis really nice looking in those colours.
Best one was the young lady with the tight trousers and what I would now describe as blonde candyfloss hair, she would clip clop in her heels into the workshop and enquire if someone could top up her screen wash, check oil and tyres in her white convertible MG, well there was always a race to get there first, everything dropped.
To bid unseen on it I think a start up and brief on the road vid always helps. With a phase of 3 SAAB's in a row as family cars in my teenage years I always have a bit of affection for them. The SAAB 900 Combi Coupe in dark blue with blue velour upholstery was a very nice car and my favorite of the bunch. Probably a misuse of the word coupe which translates for me as a two door, this was a 5 door ie 4 normal ones and a hatchback.
