Last weekend I attended a drive day sponsored by Saab Australia at the GM Holden proving grounds at Lang Lang, in south eastern Victoria.
Because Saab Australia only has one Turbo X to act as a photographic model AND press car, they didn’t want us car club hoons driving it at high speeds on a dirt track. To make sure we got something memorable out of it, though, they brought in Peter Johansson to take us for a spin.
During the week, Peter is the lead engineer working for GM on XWD applications for front-wheel drive vehicles. He’s third-gen Saab, his grandfather working on tooling for the very first Saabs and his dad working for them as an engineer as well. Peter and his Dad came up with some early AWD technology, which they sold to a company called Haldex in Sweden. See where this is going?
On the weekends, Peter drives rally cars. The AWD technology that he and his dad developed was primarily a response to his own needs in rallying. Not only can he build this stuff, he can really use it too.
There were four events on the program. I’ll get to the other three in another post, but this was the final event that our group took part in – Peter Johansson taking us for a hot lap on the GM proving ground dirt track in the Saab Turbo X.
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Peter got to speeds of up to around 170 km/h on the back section of the track and if you’ve never been that quick on dirt, let me tell you it’s quite an experience!
The car was an auto, much to Peter’s disappointment, but he still gave it a pretty good run.
This really was the highlight of the day. The car’s incredibly solid and to see it in the hands of an expert was quite a revelation. We did two laps of filming at the end of the day and the brake rotors were glowing at the end of them!
I hope you enjoyed the video. There’s plenty more to come from the weekend.
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liking this write-up, glad you had time, well done, looking forward to more
Nicely put together Swadey, What a hell of a ride that was. I understood why the driving experience was left to the professionals and us to be passengers in this particular event of the day.
Understanding the full potential of the Turbo X as a driver myself would not have been recognised with a lap behind the wheel myself. Being the only exclusive passenger in this car (one at a time) is moment I will never forget. Unbelievable!
Noice. Impressive driving.
Nice video, but would have been better without the “music”. I’d rather hear the Saab singing.
PS: Forgot to add. Hadn’t looked at my feed reader for 2 days and there were 10 posts. Glad you’ve cut back on blogging!
Robin, the music was necessary.
This video was shot with one camera. I had to run to the next filming point between laps. Considering he was lapping at about 1 minute 40, it didn’t give me long between filming stints. Now, consider the fact that I weigh in somewhere north of 100kg and haven’t run since around 1990 and you can imagine the puffing and panting the camera picked up
Like I said, the music was necessary
Holy crap. That looks like soooo much fun.
The thing that gets me is how uneventful the Turbo X is in the turns.. it’s like it’s operating on dry pavement.. that’s a testament to the XWD+eLSD doing it’s thing.
wow.
the car’s simply not afraid.
good vid, swade!
Great sound….. but take away the stupid music please!
WOW. The TurboX has never looked better! That video was awesome. Thanks for posting it.
Sorry to complain about the music as well… if you have to add music, maybe try something less annoying like Release Me from Oh Laura or Ready, Steady, Go.
But otherwise, great video! It’s also ways nice to see a Turbo X drifting along the track.
keep the tales of x coming ed. i’m keen to hear more cabin tunes coming from the exhaust manifold proving the $105k pricetag + 9% interest.
Nice, Swade – although I would not follow example with my car. Loved the Sith touch with the titles, btw.
Kaylan.. I want to see your eyes! Why shades all the time girl?
Ok I´m a 37 year old father of four.. Sorry
Why has there not been a video shot of a Turbo X reving past a camera? First nothing… nothing… and then a Turbo X shifting down and reving up.. BLASTING past with a scream! Why oh, why? I wish I could aford one.. In a year perhaps…
wish i could drive mine like that….
nice credits
Episode IV
A New Hope (for Saab): The Turbo X Version