We’ve had so many great driving days this summer that I’m starting to fall behind. So here’s a link to my Facebook album from another Southwest Iowa drive I took last weekend. It started getting interesting at this historical site in Pisgah, Iowa… a barber shop?!? You’ll have to read the photo captions in the album to see where things went from there…

From our ongoing collection, "Places Where They Probably Don't See a Lot of 1974 Saab Sonetts." Here: Pacific Junction, Iowa.

I can barely believe what great summer weather we’ve been having in Nebraska — blue skies, highs only in the mid-70s. Saturday, after some irritating tweaking of the nose position, I had to take the Sonett out for a drive. I went south, down the winding roads of southwest Iowa’s Loess Hills, and had a great time. Click here for a few photos.

I still need to do something about my front-tire clearance issue, though — look how close the fender lip is to the front tire in the photo!

Once my sad little beater... now James Chandler's concours winner

Technically, this isn’t a SAAB-related post, but it made my day:

About 10 years ago, before I got back into SAABs and bought my current tatty old Sonett, I briefly owned a Fiat-Abarth 1000. This was a performance version of the pretty Fiat 850 Spider, with the engine punched out to a whopping 1 liter, a cool finned oil pan with “ABARTH” on it in red letters, and various other enhancements.

I had bought the thing from a local guy in the hope of cleaning it up, fixing what was wrong with it, and having some fun with it (exactly the same objectives with which I later bought the Sonett.)

But once I got into the little Abarth, I realized immediately that the work it needed was ‘way over my head. Not wanting to get trapped in a money pit, I took a deep breath and just walked away, giving the thing to a body-shop guy who had helped me go through it and inventory its myriad faults. He said he thought maybe he could part it out and get a bit of money for the cool Abarth pan and various other oddments.

I was a bit sorry to think of the poor little Fiat-Abarth being gutted and then crushed… but with no storage space, work space, or inclination to go into the used-Fiat-parts business, I just didn’t have the resources to do anything with it myself. Although some might say I got “taken” by the body man, I didn’t feel that way and still don’t. If I had kept the car around, I probably wouldn’t have been able to resist the temptation to try to tinker with it; I was better off  going cold turkey and just getting it out of my life entirely.

By the time I walked away, I had owned it less than two weeks and had only driven it once.

Fast-forward to earlier this week, when I got a phone message from a man I had never heard of, named Jim Chandler. Once I contacted him, I heard a heartwarming story.

It turned out that the body man had not gutted and crushed the car. Instead he had stashed it somewhere for years on end, until just a couple of years ago… when he listed it on eBay and Mr. Chandler bought it.

Chandler is an Italian-car buff (he also has a gorgeous Lancia Flavia Zagato) and wasn’t the least intimidated by the prospect of giving the Fiat-Abarth what he called a “light cosmetic restoration.” For Italian-car fans, “light restoration” includes such casual fettling as completely replacing the floors and the cruciform frames that keep an 850 Spyder from folding up in the middle.

With the car rehabbed, restored, and painted a beautiful lustrous deep red (a big improvement over the oxidized maroon color it had had when I owned it) he was able to drive it a bit. He also began showing it in club concours events — where, he said, it has cleaned up several trophies.

I got a kick out of seeing the photos he sent me of this beautiful little car — and of knowing that I had helped make its regeneration possible. If I had tried to tinker with it, with my limited resources and skills, I’m sure I would have bodged it up so badly that it never could have been returned to its present condition. Instead, I made it possible for the Fiat-Abarth to live again… simply by knowing when the right thing to do was walk away.

Makes me feel sort of glad that I bought a pre-bodged Sonett, so I don’t have to feel guilty about the way I’ve hacked it around…