Great Scott—The President Writes

by Scott Hutchings, President

First off, I wanted to pass a message along to everyone from Sweden, from Magnus. He says:

"Goodbye and I’ll see everyone again".

Magnus is heading up the Saab product team in Sweden, focusing on the sales and marketing aspects to ensure that Saab has the right current and future product portfolio, content, and execution. He has promised to keep Canada at top of mind as he settles in to his new role.

Magnus has been replaced in Canada by Marten Wahlstedt. I have dropped him an introductory note but have yet to hear back from him.

Marten, if you read this edition of the Gryphon before my e-mail, please look me up. I would like to chat with you. ;-)

At the end of August, I was lucky enough to attend SOC 07. It was quite an eye opener I’ll tell you, having never been to one before. Highlights of the weekend included having my $25 a piece brand new tires installed (bought the tires from the Saab parts tent at about 7:15am on Friday morning).

But the real story was Dmitry and his adventures in his convertible. Since that story has been told around the world already (on our own forum, on The Saab Link in the US, and on the Trollhattan Saab blog out of Australia, I won’t go over it again here. If you haven’t read or heard about what happened, feel free to drop me an e-mail and I will be happy to fill you in.

October 5 Enhanced Driving School

For those of you not aware, our club is hosting our second driving school this year at Shannonville on Friday October 5, 2007. Cost for the day is $245 and includes coffee in the morning, lunch, and a very educational day of learning how to drive your own car.

Spots are filling up quickly and it is first come, first served. There is no preference for SOCCI members over any other paying driver, so be sure to get your applications in ASAP to lock up a spot at what has typically been the best attended school of the year for us.

And if you know anyone who might be interested, call them right away. We would prefer to fill this up as quickly as we can.

If you are interested in our schools but would like to see what they are about first, we are always looking for volunteers to help out during the day. It is a great way to see what happens, what people can learn. And you can see how the drivers out there improve from the first time they hit the track, to their performance mid day, to their last run. It really is very noticeable how much people can improve in one day.SOCCI Sponsorship

I would like to wish Ken Pavri and John Burnet best wishes and good luck as they embark on another adventure in Newfoundland in September. They are participating in their second Targa event.

As SOCCI is sponsoring the B&D Racing team this year, we have a link up on our main site to their site (that Blake was kind enough to help out with). The B&D site follows each day’s events and they are posting pictures when they can.

So far, it has been quite an adventure, just getting to the event itself, never mind driving in it.

On behalf of the entire club, I wish you good luck Ken and John … I’m sure you will make us all very proud.

Until we meet again, Happy Saabing!

Scott