A HOLIDAY ADVENTURE!

So I was immediately alerted this morning, having just stopped for juice in Kristinehamn⁽¹⁾, when a new blue Saab 95 burbled rather than crackled onto the old fashioned petrol station forecourt where I was standing with the R60 I was testing for the blue 'un. By its pulses I reckoned the little passion wagon had a V under its bonnet and everyone knows these splendid little cars, driven so expertly in rallies all over the world by my good friend Erik 'on the roof' Carlsson⁽²⁾, are powered by barely adequate in-line two-stroke triples. Was this a home-brewed special or something new from Trollhattan? Time to find out!

So while the attendant fussed around the Saab I tackled the driver, making direct eye contact and speaking slowly and loudly, as is always the best policy when communicating with foreigners of any sort. But despite understanding the Queen's English perfectly well I am sure, the blighter turned shifty and feigned ignorance to avoid answering my questions. After a muttered conversation in their own incomprehensible lingo, the pair retired to the forecourt hut, closed the door firmly behind them and watched me from behind twitching curtains. Clearly the intriguing little car would not run again until I was off the scene. Time to make myself scarce.

There had been no chance of a proper shufti but the car definitely did not have the distinctive whiff of a two-stroke about it and neither native added any lubricating agent to the petrol. A surreptitious glance inside the car had revealed a technical manual and Saab headed graph paper on a clipboard on the passenger seat. Clearly this was a factory job!

After donning gloves and bone dome I fired up the Bee Em and made haste until I was well out of sight. Then, using a gentle throttle I made a series of left turns on minor roads until the petrol station came back into view. I parked the Bavarian masterpiece behind some pines and sat discreetly doggo. The Saab's pilot soon emerged and, after furtively looking up and down the road several times, the uncommunicative chap jumped in his little blue estate and tooled off along the lakeside road at a fair old lick.

He set a hot pace but what a fine atmosphere disturber the BMW boxer is! After some glorious bend swinging he was soon within striking distance but I held back to avoid putting the wind up the shifty Swede. After several miles the Saab swung off the main road onto a forest track and I was suddenly struggling to keep up. BMWs do not make the best off-roaders⁽³⁾ and the teeth rather rattled in the de Forte bonce. Snaking away from me, the Saab handled like the rally car it was, but by now one thing was absolutely certain: at no time had I detected burnt oil in my nostrils or heard the ring-ting-ting of gases forced through an expansion chamber exhaust system. The Swedish machine was definitely not a two stroke.

The car finally pulled up outside a large wooden house in a clearing and no fewer than six 96 saloons and another 95 estate were parked in front of it. Rather than pull up at a distance and snoop about on foot I pressed on and scrunched to a stop behind him, yanking late on the binders and leaping off the Beemer before he even had a chance to get into the building. But before I could confront the chap once more, the house door flew open and with much nationally uncharacteristic shouting and arm waving a group of highly agitated Swedes rushed out and surrounded me.

They wanted me to leave immediately and seemed prepared to use force if necessary. It was a dicey-do but then a calm and familiar face appeared in the doorway and with just a wave of the chap's hand the babbling ceased and the goons retreated. The senior bod was none other than former aircraft engineer Gunnar Ljungstrom, the brains behind every Saab car since the first 92 back in the 1940s. "De Forte if I'm not mistaken," announced the distinguished Swede in perfect English. "What a turn up for the books. Please come in."

Apologising for the over excitement of his fellow countrymen, Ljungstrom led me through the old house past telex machines, telephones, typewriters and drawing boards and into a kitchen where pistons and conrods lay on the table and strong coffee was brewing on the stove. From there we entered a garage area where several more 96s were being fitted with small V4 engines. Elsewhere, boffins in white laboratory coats were microscopically analysing and measuring the component parts of a disassembled motor. I was told to sit down, given a mug of supercharged coffee and while his men returned to work around us, Ljungstrom gave me the pukka gen about what was happening in the remote timber house in the forest.

It seems as far back as the introduction of the 96 in early 1960, Ljungstrom and colleague Rolf Mellde had been urging the company to develop a 4-stroke engine, but because Carlsson, Moss and others were winning rallies all over the globe using two-stroke power they could not convince the top brass of the need to act.

The problem also stemmed from the fact all Saabs have to have unique character, known in the factory as 'Saab spirit'. To many in Trollhattan, abandoning their quirky front wheel drive two-strokes was utterly unthinkable. But while powering the front wheels had been made acceptable to the masses by the success of the Issigonis Mini, the Swedish public was falling out of love with the little 'stinky toy' two-strokes they once held dear.

The Saab chiefs were clearly badly out of touch with their customers; two-stroke sales were plummeting and the company was slipping quietly into crisis.⁽⁴⁾ At the eleventh hour, Ljungstrom and Mellde's view prevailed but there was no time to develop a new engine. A suitable unit had to be obtained from outside and production had to start without delay. But everything had to be top secret because news of the decision before the new model was available would kill stroker sales completely and bankrupt the firm. The solution to the problem was this covert op in Kristinehamn dubbed Operation Kajsa. I had gatecrashed the party.

The German-built Ford Taunus V4 engine was chosen for the job⁽⁵⁾ and a trusted employee called Gillbrand, who was assumed by his colleagues to have left the company for family reasons, was in fact sent secretly to northern Italy with one of the 1500cc units fitted craftily into a Saab 96. The chap drove it day and night on Dolomite passes, racking up 80,000 tough kilometres in just a few months.

The test went well and a bogus company was set up to order further engines, rent the concealed timber house in the forest and to purchase clutch casings, electrical systems and miscellaneous small components. By now nine Saab chaps knew about the project and they were all gathered here in the woods to build and test more V4 cars, analyse wear on Gillbrand's engine, rewrite workshop manuals and plan the production line switch-over.

After dining on meatballs of uncertain origin and pungent but strangely addictive pickled herrings, the beer and home-made schnapps began flowing and I was made to swear a solemn Viking oath to keep the V4 a secret. Then Ljungstrom and his pals set out the next stage of the plan. It seems the V4 fits the engine compartment well and links up easily to the transmission so no large scale factory prep is required. The annual factory shut-down period is just about to start and 40 trusty individuals will be hand-picked for summer holiday work at the Trollhattan works.

Apparently many complete cars minus engines and brakes are stockpiled at the factory and these are destined to become the first V4 production cars. No-one suspects as there has been a disc brake supply problem and the drones will be told they were coming in to fit newly arrived rotary stoppers to the unfinished cars.

So next week the nine exhausted Operation Kajsa engineers will return to Trollhattan and during the holiday month, they will work together with the trusties to complete as many as four-stroke cars as possible ahead of the V4's official announcement, which will coincide with the return of the rest of the workforce and the factory's return to full capacity⁽⁶⁾.

I was more than slightly pie-eyed when at 2am Ljungstrom and I raised our glasses in final toasts to the future success and prosperity of Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget and to 'Saab spirit'.

After three hours' sleep under a blanket on the sofa I gulped down some stewed coffee from the stove and tottered out into the golden dawn light. I felt a bit woozy for a moment after swinging down on the BMW's somewhat awkward kickstarter but felt better as the German machine warmed through, shaking off the morning dew as it did so. Clearly I was still somewhat schnapps squiffy but I had to be inside the Arctic Circle by nightfall and needed to press on. Anxious pale faces appeared at the windows as I clunked into first gear and turned to leave but the Swedes have no need to worry. Their secret is safe with me⁽⁷⁾.

⁽¹⁾ Kristinehamn is a tiny town on shore of Lake Vanern, 250 kilometres from Oslo, Gothenburg and Stockholm. A baffling totem pole-like sculpture by Picasso stands on the lake shore.

⁽²⁾ Carlsson was a motorcycle racer who taught himself how to drive on unmade roads in a 25 horsepower twin cylinder 764cc Saab 92. He learned to keep the revs up and the wheels in line, steer accurately and find the shortest route through any bend. Driving Saab 93s and 96s in the late 1950s and 1960s he won or was highly placed in dozens of major international rallies including the Monte Carlo, East African, Baja, English RAC, the Tulip Rally in Holland, and the Thousand Lakes in Finland. And he married Sir Stirling's equestrian sister Pat who became his co-driver.

⁽³⁾ Of course this was long before the German firm's gigantic Paris-Dakar adventure bikes could be found on the pavement outside every British high street cafe.

⁽⁴⁾ 28,894 two-stroke Saabs were sold in Sweden in 1964 and 26,046 in 1965, but just 18,963 were shifted in 1966. At the insistence of die-hards, two-stroke sales continued alongside the V4 but this ended in 1968 after only 28 were sold on the home market that year.

A two-stroke must be loved and cared for otherwise will let you down. As motorcycle racers know only too well, if oil is not mixed with the petrol in the correct quantities two-strokes are likely to nip up with disastrous consequences. Frequent failures, usually due to owner error, were making Saab's engine replacement policy cripplingly expensive, according to Ljungstrom.

⁽⁵⁾ The Taunus engine was initially designed in the USA for the abandoned 'Cardinal' small car project before being passed on to Ford's European subsiduaries where it was further developed before appearing Britain in the rear wheel drive Corsair and in Germany in the front wheel drive Taunus. The secretive Scandinavians were amused when I told them Ford had used Saab 96s as test mules during the engine's early development in the USA.

⁽⁶⁾ The plan worked well. The target was met and when the V4 was officially launched on 2 August 1966 the company had 600 cars ready to ship to dealers.

⁽⁷⁾ I kept my word and a crate of Swedish schnapps and a box of pickled herrings has arrived in Bales at Christmas ever since.