SAAB Arrrrgh!

That's how I feel about it, arrrgh! Don't get me started; you buy a technologically sophisticated and powerful car, and it lets you down big time. The car is similar to the new Euro Fighter, Typhoon, which is completely computerised. In fact it is more or less impossible to fly manually. Well, SAAB have for many years made fighter jets and used some of their aviation knowledge in their cars, and I am very much for modern technology, when it works!

But the other day I went to the lock-up garage to get the car, opened the door and pressed the button on the key, as one does. No response. Tried again, nothing! Dead. Luckily I had not parked it too close to the wall on the passenger side, so I could use the skeleton key, good old-fashioned key, which you can pull out of the rubber cover. Inside the car I could not even open the driver's door despite the fact that I pulled up the lock lever. No light came on inside, and I realised that the onboard computer had crashed somehow and flattened the battery. The car was completely useless!

Man in yellow rescue vehicle could not make it work. Even if he got it started, it cut out after thirty seconds or so. Sooo, I had to have the embarrassing experience of having the SAAB pulled up, backwards, onto a "Schleppwagen", and parading it through our neighbourhood on our way to the garage. They replaced the battery and will need the weekend to reset the computer. Although the warranty provides me with a replacement car, I feel inclined to go back to the old, trusted, 17-year-old Astra. It's a simple creature, but easier to understand.