Aaron Stokes and his hard-working crew at Eurofix do good work. Always willing to go the extra mile for a Saab owner. I should know; they’re my independent Saab repair shop.

Aaron and his brother Joe (his chief mechanic) started the business as The Saab Shop in a barn on their father’s property here in the Franklin, Tennessee area (a suburb of Nashville) several years ago. Over time, they’ve accumulated quite a number of Saab stories, and they’ve expanded into a cavernous warehouse that accomodates their service bays, indoor storage for project cars and indoor parking for customer vehicles. Recently, they dropped the Saab Shop name (boo!) in favor of the more generic Eurofix to reflect the increasing number of BMW, Mercedes, VW and (ahem) Volvo customers that come to them for service.

Their website recently highlighted a 1999 Viggen (look familiar Swade?) with unusual provenance, and I thought that I would share the story here.

It seems that the Saab enthusiast that owns this specific 1999 Viggen took the car to a local shop of great repute for some modifications and a few minor bits of repair. During the course of the work, a technician that was ‘test driving’ the Viggen over revved the engine repeatedly, causing a great deal of damage to the car — the rod and piston in one of the cylinders separated and the uncontrolled piston motion severely damaged the cylinder and head. It’s always hard to tell with these things, but the crankshaft was bent as well — did this come before or after the rod came lose?

The owner negotiated with the offending shop, but things didn’t work out, so our fellow Saab enthusiast and Viggen owner filed suit against them for the considerable damages. It took at least two years, but the Viggen owner prevailed. I’m no legal expert, but I can imagine that it would be difficult to prove in court that the Viggen wasn’t on the verge of failure when the technician took his little joy ride. Our friend immediately had the Saab towed over to Eurofix for some real expertise and true Saab spirit.

As you can imagine, any car that sits derelict outside a machanic’s garage for two plus years decays pretty rapidly. Most of the seals were brittle, the brakes had seized and the interior was moldy. And, of course, the engine troubles hadn’t fixed themselves, either.

The guys decided that the only course of action was to start with an entirely new engine block, which the customer was all too happy about — someone else was paying! After many, many new parts (a partial list is after the break), the car is beatiful and running better than ever!

Swade, this could be your car in a short period of time! Take heart!

A partial list of modifications and new parts:

• All-new engine block, head, crankshaft and piston/rod
• Transmission service
• All-new brake rotors, mechanisms and pads
• New mid-muffler (resonator)
• All-new hoses
• New high-performance ECU
• Pulleys and belts for A/C and alternator
• Two motor mounts
• Uprated shocks

Here are the remaining pictures of the work in progress:

I’ve seen the car around town, and I can say that it looks magnificent. Here’s to Swade getting his Viggen back into action!