Powar wrote: This was my instructor's car from the track day at Nelson Ledges a few weeks ago.
Holy berkeleying E36 M3. If that's really a SAAB 99, I think I helped build it (in a front desk guy carrying parts and helping to bleed brakes for the real mechanics kinda way..).
S&J Automotive is a local SAAB indie shop here in Atlanta. The owner (Jack Baxter) was one of my Corner Worker buddies in the late 1980s. When I first hit town, I didn't have a job. I lived in the "apartment" part of my mom's house in Virginia Highlands, and Jack was one of the four or five of racing buddies who gave me a job for half a minute around here before I got hired on at (EDIT: Corporate Overlords won't let me say it out loud anymore. Lemme just say it's a "large provider of televised content for cable TV, based in Atlanta, Georgia". I'll be reckless enough to say that I like to spend money at "Ted's Montana Grille" when I can.)
Jack's whole life revolved around SAABs, (like most of the people who start a good Indie shop do!) and even though the 99 we built handled well..there was no way it would have the grunt to hunt down the other 2ltr cars winning races in ITB.
He didn't care. He was just delighted to be driving, instead of watching. And of course, all of the spectators driving 900s ( a current car at the time) pointed at it, and more important, copied the phone number off the side of the car.
Gotta plug Jack's place again, he got kicked out of the original building because of moronic real estate rental stuff before the recession.
http://www.sjauto.repair.bz/
I still laugh when I see his old location empty with "for lease" signs on it..but I'm happy that I don't work there anymore. We had so many parts cars parked on the property that I can't help but wonder how he moved them all.
I guess I need to go see the man, and ask him to tell me the story..
Not putting up a hotlink, because I need to go find my pix of that thing and upload it to my Photobucket.
Powar, sorry for writing the novel, but it really amazed me to see that car again. Can you tell me who owns it now, and how he got it? If you saw the "FTC" logo on the side of it, that was the shop's old Team Name. It stood for "Faster Than Christ", and was suggested by a man named Joe Garrison (RIP), a former SCCA Production class driver who Jack had also invited to work with us at S&J. He was an SCCA Tech Inspector when we met him. Joe was probably the one that explained to Jack how to build the car legally.