Wow, it’s been a while. Hope that you’ve all had a great summer. Mine was a blur.

A number of great things in this package, including a tip of the hat to our friends at the meetup today, suggested Saab shopping for Swade while he’s in North America, and a new website that promises to choose your Saab for you. Oh, and I wouldn’t buy a Nissan anytime soon — more on that as well.

First, the promised shout out to all in Washington state with Swade this weekend, kudos! I’m sure that Ken has sniffed out the best locale for eats, and that route seems appropriately challenging. I suggest taking advantage of what the locale has to offer: salmon, mountains and mining-era charm. Travel safely!

Second: While Swade is in the state of Washington, I thought that I’d give him a few Saab shopping tips:

- 2000 Viggen five-door in Spokane, Washington. Thoose of you who are familiar with this part of the world will understand right off that Spokane, Washington is likely five hours from today’s meetup starting point of Issaquah, Washington. It’s also likely some of the dullest driving that one would ever do. However, for this little gem, it would certainly be worth it! From Craigslist.org comes this fantastic car in Monte Carlo yellow, no less! US$11,000, but it comes with some extras. Nice!

Spokane Viggen

- While you’re at the Ikea outlet, take a gander at the tools (the Fixa series, in Ikea speak) and no Saab owner should be without a FLÖRT (I am not making this up) for your tunes. Swedish-designed tools and storage, what could be more appropriate?

- Certainly, XXX Root Beer seems to have great potential for souvenir shopping. I’ll have the ‘59 Caddy or the Hubcap.

Third: GM has a website to choose your Saab for you! That’s right, folks, you can test your degree of Saabiness here. For me, the site selected the Saab 9-3 Turbo XWD based upon this profile. Fitting! (Note: I didn’t realize that Swade had posted this in his snippets piece about 10 hours ago. My bad!)

Finally: Car & Driver has posted results from a review that I find incredibly enlightening. They gathered up several sport sedans and SUVs and subjected them to emergency braking torture. All cars, including the Cadillac (sorry Swade) comported themselves well except for the two entries from Nissan, the Infiniti FX50S, and the Nissan 350ZX. The brakes on both vehicles simply failed about one third of the way through this admittedly extreme test. Not a good thing for Japanese auto buffs.

It was great to talk with Swade this week in actual real time! He and I spoke for a couple of hours via the magic of the internet, and I think that he’s much more of a people person than he gives himself credit for. Good luck, my friend!