Check the forecast for Detroit, Michigan for the next week — cold and snow. For those of you that use a rational scale such as Celcius for measuring temperatures, simply remember that 32 degrees Farenheit is the freezing point. Note that the temperature only varies a few degrees in either direction the whole week.

Actually, it could be much worse. Lows in the single digits (around -15 degrees C) are not uncommon in the Upper Midwest this time of year.

Much too cold for me. I’ll take our 55 degrees F (13 degrees C) and like it. Although, I’m beginning to consider building some sort of ark in case it rains again. We are one hard rain away from floating into the Gulf of Mexico, I’m telling you.

I’m paying $13 a day for the internet connection here in Detroit (grrrrr) so I may as well make use of it…..I thought I’d post a few more images from the day and night in LA.

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As I mentioned, I was fortunate enough to go for a ride with Bob Sinclair in his Ferrari 308. We headed up the road from his place to a little spot called Cold Springs. There’s a little tavern there, that used to be a stagecoach stopover back in the old days. Back then it was a full day’s ride by stage from Santa Barbara.

We did it in about 10 minutes in the stallion

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As much as Bob’s a car guy, he’s even more of a motorbike guy. he has a restored Husqvarna bike in his living room and a bunch of bikes in the garage downstairs (incl another Husky, IIRC).

This is his most recent purchase, an Aprilia he bought in September last year.

He bought it in the east and his initial plan was to go take a look and then freight it back, but he ended up riding it back across the US instead

A sea-to-shining-sea road trip on bike by a guy in his mid-70′s – cool.

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After dinner that night, we all headed out to Walter Wong’s Saab garage.

Walter runs an independent Saab workshop in LA called Right Solution, Inc. Though if you want to find him on the web, look under Saabtech and you’ll be covered.

If you’re in LA and looking for a Saab mechanic, then Walter’s your guy. Need a loaner car while your pride and joy is in getting fixed? Walter’s got around 20 of ‘em!! He’s got a full range of vehicles there from a Saab 99 EMS up to a 9-3SE and what the customer wants as a loaner, they usually get.

You can even loan a famous Saab! This is the actual convertible used in the movie, Sideways.

The film people actually came to Walter to look for the car. They wanted a red convertible with a dark interior, rather than the lighter biscuit leather interior. As this was hard to find, they eventually took a silver-on-black convertible and painted it red. You can still see the silver paint in various places now, e.g. in the engine bay.

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In addition to all of Walter’s cars, we had the former Yankton Saab 9-3 that I showed last night turn up (full details here - thanks to dip), as well as a pretty highly tuned Saab 900 as well.

It was late at night and the 900 was black, so the photos turned out terrible, except for this one. No, it’s not scratched up like crazy.

When Kevin Yankton was making his carbon fibre parts (the 9-3 is FULL of them) he made just 4 carbon fibre hoods for the C900.

This is one of ‘em!

Howdy all, and greetings from my hotel room at the Marriott, in the Renaissance Center itself! I’ve got a pizza and basketball on ESPN – does life get much better than that?

Well, yeah, it does actually. I could have my family here, too. But if you’re going to be stuck somewhere halfway around the world, then being there with a pizza and Kobe Bryant makes it better.

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Thanks for all the power adaptor advice. Eggs and Gripen have both sent a solution by overnight mail, and to matters even more adaptable, I purchased a universal unit at O’Hare airport in Chicago. I thought I better grab it while I saw it.

The posted units won’t go to waste, however, as I have other electrical goods that need to be charged and I’m sure at least one of them will be in the same boat as the laptop.

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So, on to things Saab….Lets kick it off with sightings so far in the US:

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The US is an interesting and entertaining place for a tourist. This is going to sound rather stuffy, maybe even patronising, but it’s interesting to watch anyone in a service industry ‘on show’ whilst they’re on the job.

The pursar on the flight from Chicago to Detroit today was absolutely hilarious. It was like he was an FM radio DJ who took an airline job when things went bad. When he got on the microphone it was game-on. The guy on the desk at my hotel last night was the complete opposite. So laid back he was almost in a coma. Which was good.

I’m not a naturally friendly person, so the personable nature of everyone here is actually quite confronting.

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Everything smells good here, too. Several times the airline staff came up tha aisle collecting garbage and they had to most fragrant garbage bags you’d ever smell.

Made me want to jump right in and try out some leftovers.

Or not. It’s just another curiosity of being in the US, I suppose.

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I asked everyone about tipping a few weeks ago, then promptly forgot all the advice. I had a room service guy deliver a pizza tonight and leave with a very forlorn look on his face. D’oh!

I went down to the service desk later and left a tip and a note for him. Felt bad.

The pizza was great, which was a surprise. I’d heard bad things about US pizza, but it was great.

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OK, there have been a couple of Saab sightings……

Gripen and I came across a few yesterday, including a sweet looking FL9-5 Combi in LA last night.

I haven’t seen any 9-7x’s or 9-2x’s though. I thought I might. I’ve only been on the road between the airport and the hotel here in Detroit and didn’t see any Saabs at all.

I did see a 9-3 Aero and a 9-5 Aero in the valet parking here at the hotel, though.

Overall, there’s been a very low visibility situation with Saabs here so far. I guess I expected it, but didn’t want it to be that way.

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I haven’t seen a Saab ad, yet. Neither by way of billboard or TV ad.

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The story on the 9-1 has drawn a lot of comments. I feel totally out of the loop on that as it’s all happened while I’ve been travelling and offline.

I’ll try and find out what I can over the next few days.

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Tomorrow will consist of catching up with a few guys here for lunch, and just trying to find my way around seeing I arrived in darkness tonight.

Thanks for hanging around. I’ll get up to speed on Saab events and happenings in the morning.

For now, I really need to catch up on some sleep.

Well, I flew in today after a hellishly long flight. Grrrrrr.

I’m in LA and the first thing that happened was getting my fingerprints scanned and my photo taken. Security is everywhere. The next thing that happened was a greeting from 1985Gripen, who met me at the airport.

I don’t have time to give a full run down of all that happened today as it’s past 1am and I’ve had about 2 hours sleep in the last 36. Also, I didn’t get the right sort of power plug adaptor back in Oz, so I’m on battery power until I can find a solution, and I’m running out fast!

So quickly….

Gripen and I took the Pacific Coast Highway down to Bob Sinclair’s place. Bob’s the former head of Saab USA,and it was a total honour to sit in his home for 3 or so hours and just swap stories and thoughts. He’s got a lot of both and I’ll cover some thoughts from that conversation as time passes.

It was a magic three hours or so. Bob’s not the sentimental type, though he still loves the brand.

We took a look over his vehicle collection and then he took me for a ride in this:

Mama!! it’s a Ferrari 328 GTS and let’s just say Bob knows how to drive it

Gripen and I then jumped back in the car and headed back to LA for dinner with some of the SoCal Saab Club guys. They even secretly talked the waiters into bringing me out a dessert with a candle in it and singing happy birthday (my birthday’s in March!).

More on all that later, too.

After dinner we headed out to Walter Wong’s Saab workshop (more on that later, too) and were joined by Steve in this rather heavily modified Saab.

You guessed it – more on that later.

I’m off to catch some Z’s. If anyone’s got a thought on how I can power my laptop, I’m all ears. I need an adaptor that’ll fit an Australian 3-prong plug and adapt to a US plug. The ones I bought in Australia were for a 2-prong only (I didn’t realise my laptop cord had three prongs – doh!).

It’s a HP laptop, circa 2006.

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My undying gratitude to 1985 Gripen for sharing the day with me, driving me around. It was an great chance to meet up face to face and I couldn’t have wished for a better host.

I hope you enjoyed the day as much as I did, mate!

Further to my Detroit Snippets of last night, I’ve just received another itinerary from Saab Australia. It seems they’re running a special program for the Australian journos. I’m a little unsure as to how obliged I am to comply as it includes a number of things I hadn’t planned on attending and I’m after as much time with the Saab people there as possible

One of those events they’ve included is the GM Style event.

The GM Style event features various celebrities parading down a catwalk accompanied by various new GM production vehicles and concept cars. I don’t think the celebs perform at all, the vast majority are just there to be appreciated for being there. Pardon my French, but in Australia we’d call something like this a wankfest.

If they’re actually performing, that might be different thing all together, so maybe I’ll go along and reserve my judgement. I might need some better clothes, though.

And why is Kid Rock so popular?

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I was thinking of doing the whole 4 days in Detroit whilst wearing shorts. Just for something different.

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It seems Cadillac will be stealing the environmental limelight – starting tomorrow.

They’ll be unveiling the pharmaceutically-named Cadillac Provoq, which is written up as “a vision for a petroleum-free future of luxury transportation.”

It’ll appear at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

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Tim Rokka – my emails to you keep bouncing.

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Sales data snippets coming soon.

There’s only two more days in Hobart and then I’m off on one of those big silver birds to Detroit, for the North American International Auto Show.

I’d like to say I’m excited, but right now I’m just tired and dreading the flights. There’s barely a worse formula for jetlag than flying to an eight-hours-difference timezone when you’re going against the sun. But I’m sure it’s going to be a blast.

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I arrive in Detroit on the 11th, will have the 12th free to get acclimatised (i.e. sleep) and then things get rolling on the 13th. Here’s the program from GM’s perspective as it was emailed to me:

Sunday 1/13 8 AM-10 AM: OnStar breakfast and tour of Command Center with Chet Huber, OnStar President, at OnStar headquarters in Renaissance Center.

Sunday 1/13 11:20 AM: Hummer and Saab press conference – Cobo Convention Center

Sunday 1/13 6 PM: Dinner hosted by Jill Lajdziak, General Manager of Saturn, at Andiamo’s Restaurant in the Renaissance Center

Monday 1/14 9:10 AM: Cadillac press conference – Cobo

Monday 1/14 11:00 AM- 12:00 PM: Group online media interview with Troy Clarke, President, GM North America

Monday 1/14 12:10 PM: Cadillac press conference – Cobo

Monday 1/14 7:30 PM: Dinner with Mark LaNeve, Vice President, North American Vehicle Sales, Service & Marketing and Tony Cervone, Vice President, Communications, North America at Hockeytown

Tuesday 1/15 7:30 – 8:45AM: Group online media breakfast with Rick Wagoner, GM Chairman and CEO

Tuesday 1/15 TBD: Group online media meeting with Jamie Hresko, Vice President, GM Quality

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I can tell you with certainty that I’m going to attend one of those events – the Saab presentation on the 13th. The rest of my time will be spent amongst the Saab people there as much as possible.

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Jan-Ake Jonsson will be the first person I’ve ever met on three separate continents. Sweden in June 07, Australia in December 07 and Detroit in January 08. I think he might end up taking a restraining order against me.

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Of course, for Saab it will just about all be about the 9-4x concept that they will show at the event.

It’s now just short of a week before it’s due to be unveiled. I’ll bet you the shirt on my back that pictures are out on the web in the next 36 hours. Previous experience backs me up on this and I might remind Saab that it’s only been me that’s shown them first on one occasion.

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Is there a local who knows the Detroit area who could co-ordinate dinner for a few people – perhaps on Friday 11th or Saturday 12th?

I’ll be there and I believe Greg Abbott will too. Hopefully Tedjs might still be in town and after I finish typing this I’ll email Wulf. Once again, any others are more than welcome, but we need some place to go, too.

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I got an email today from a guy I’d love to meet while I’m there, but I fear that distance and the northern winter will put the kibosh on those plans.

He worked for Cadillac for 37 years, is 76 years of age, and last year he travelled to Sweden via the EDP to pick up his second Saab – which he loves.

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After the show, it’s highly likely that the posting rate will slow down a bit at this site. I’ll be frank with you – I’m starting to burn out, and the frustration I feel with a lot of things to do with GM is not making life much fun around here, for me, my workplace or my family.

What makes the perceived lack of support so frustrating is that the cars are really, really good. They deserve better.

Oops…there I go again!