Here in Australia, European cars are seen as refined vehicles. I European car is, by default, held as being a classier ride than the Australian cars in its class. Because they attract a lot of import duties, they’re usually quite a bit more expensive, though they usually compensate for this by being reasonably well equipped by local standards.

It’s probably for these reasons that we don’t see a lot of highly modified European cars here in Australia. Like most places, the cars that get modified the most are the local cars. in Australia, that means pretty much anything that’s Australian or Asian. Modified Falcons and Commodores are only now being outnumbered by the Fast and the Furious crowd in what could probably be regarded quite rightly as an automotive generational change.

When I went to Sweden last year with my high regard for European cars in mind, I was quite surprised to see vehicles like these on show……

….but then I shouldn’t have been surprised, really, should I?

Just like the kids back home with their hot Hondas and freaky Falcons, these guys were locals modifying their local cars.

Not content with his discovery of the Saab 9000 Camovertible the other day, SaabRobz has been out there surfing the web looking for other very modified Saabs.

Here’s a few of the cars he found:

A chopped, re-snouted and vee-sixed Saab 95 wagon:

A mildly worked Saab 99T enjoying some attention from the ladies:

And a not-so-mildly worked Saab 99 with a 16 valve turbo slotted in there somewhere…

Here’s a very poor image of a modified Saab 96

But there’s a whole heap of better images of modified 96s here

….including another pic of this:

Not only is this a 99T (one of my favourite Saabs ever) it’s also a convertible. And it’s………very purple.

A rather amazing 95 ute that I’d like to see more of.

And of course, the ‘Saab Sonett V’ supposedly designed as a special by Sergio Coggiola and previously featured here.

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Somehow it all feels a little disrespectful and a little wonderful all at the same time. All of these people did things to Saabs that I’d never considering doing, but I’m glad they did it.

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I first wrote about Rayzer lamps in March this year and at that time, they were only available directly from the manufacturer in Sweden. Rayzer have now secured a distributor in the US and are available directly. They’ve even dropped the price!

If you haven’t come across Rayzer before, here’s the description:

The Rayzer lighting system is intended to provide the same sort of function as the driving lights mounted on the bumpers of rally cars, etc. Modern car design doesn’t always make the fitment of those lights practical or visually appealing today, hence the development of the Rayzer system (by former race driver, Lars Svelander).

Instead of being outside the car where they’re difficult to mount, prone to dirt, stonechips and theft, the Rayzer lights are flush-mounted inside the car against the windscreen, fitting in just behind your rear view mirror. The high-mounted position allows for very effective illumination of the road and shoulder ahead.

The dual lamps are HID Xenons and they are wirelessly connected to your vehicle’s high-beam switch. When they sense oncoming traffic, they switch off automatically.

Click here to shoot through to Youtube and see a video of them in action.

The lamps were around US$1200 when I first covered them here at TS. They’re now retailing for US$1,050.

Rayzer have an introductory special for the US market until the end of October, where you can get the Rayzer lamps for US$945. Check them out at Rayzer’s funky new US website.

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Today I finished installing my fire extinguisher in the Alfa, one of the required safety devices prior to me getting out on the track at Baskerville tomorrow. I thought I’d post a few pictures and a description in case anyone’s thinking of undertaking a similar project.

I made my bracket out of aluminium (aloooooooominum for you non-Queen’s English types), using a sheet of flat aluminium for the base and a piece of right-angle bolted onto it to hold the extinguisher bracket.

The base sheet was 3mm thick and 40mm wide. I cut it to 450mm to fit in front of the Alfa’s seats. The outer holes are for the seat bolts, cut at 30mm inside of each edge. The inner holes are where the right angle was attached.

This is the right angle piece with the extinguisher bracket attached. It was important to fit the unit keeping in mind the fill length of the extinguisher once it’s fitted. This means the bracket itself will be off center, but once the extinguisher is fitted, it’ll be nicely placed.

The bolts are 6mm and I used nylon locking nuts to ensure a snug fit that won’t move or squeak.

I had to bore out the holes on the outside as I didn’t have a metal drill bit wide enough. They were 8mm but I bored them out to around 10mm so the seat bolts would fit through adequately.

The installation took a little longer than expected as the seat posts didn’t line up with their holes straight away. I attached the rear posts first in the hope that they’d line up the front ones, but still had trouble. Loosening up the rear ones again meant that I could manipulate the front ones a bit more and eventually I got them in there. The hardest part in the end was the constant re-fitting of the hex key I had to use to tighten them again. I hate hex keys.

The final result is reasonably neat, though it’d probably look better in black. I might remove it and paint it eventually. The mount is very secure and the extinguisher is easily accessible from either seat, without taking up any legroom.

The downside is that being mounted to the seat posts, it limits the forward travel of the seat. This is only an issue if I’m carrying someone in the back, which rarely happens in this car.

Soon, I’ll make up a shroud to cover the extinguisher so that it’s not so visible. Right now it stands out a fair bit and would be a pretty tempting practical joke for some young idiots out for a laugh.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with it. I’m not sure how applicable this design would be to any Saab, especially the newer ones with their electric seats, etc. But for what it’s worth, this one’s a simple design that works pretty well.

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My thanks to Gripen for coming across this one….

There’s a guy in Japan who’s built – and is selling – an in-car dock for the Mac Mini. He started life as a programmer and whilt he always loved Macs, ended up in the evil, smelly and leprous world of Windows (I just love to get Eggs fired up!). I guess it’s where the work was.

When the Mac Mini came out in 2005, he figured it was small enough to try fitting into his car. The end result is a Mac Mini docking system that works in conjunction with a touchscreen control system. You can use the Mini as a music store, GPS system, you can even set it up with voice commands and get all ‘Knight Rider’ with it.

The reason Gripen sent the link to me was the following photo from the company website:

It’s a Saab 9-3 convertible with the Mac Mini dock installed. I’m not so sure about that huge screen, but I guess once you’re in your driving position and you’re used to it, you could get by.

I guess the whole point of this is it’s a Mac-nut doing something kinda extreme with their Mac and then offering it to similar like-minded Mac-nuts. All you Windows types will probably scratch your head and just say “whatever”.

The congruence between Saab and Mac has been noted on these pages before, however, and I know there’d be more than just a few people who’d love to see some Mac-style electronics in their Saabs. Me included.

This isn’t quite the way I’d like to go to get it, though. And at just over US$1,000 for the dock and the touochscreen (it’s BYO Mac), it certainly ain’t cheap.

If you’re hungry for some Mac-love in your Saab – here’s where you get it: Mac Mini dock

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