Saabeth in the Hague

There is no update from the Garage this weekend, as we decided to take an extended weekend off. We have been to Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the past – and both cities are really nice, but this time we visited Den Haag for the first time. And this is a place to instantly fall in love with. The laid-back Dutch attitude and hospitality, the absolutely stunning Geuzenkwartier & Zeeheldenkwartier districts as well as the city center, the international touch, countless excellent restaurants all paired with perfect weather and temperatures above 20°C (Hello climate change…) made it a perfect trip.

As there is a ferry from Harwich to Hoek-van-Holland – which is just ~20km from Den Haag – as well as a Eurostar train from Rotterdam back to London which just takes 3,5h – our son also used this opportunity to visit us. Frankly, the main reason for this is because he recently moved close to the London city center and his 1988 Saab 900 Turbo S (nicknamed Saabeth) is not needed or practical in the London ULEV (Ultra Low Emission Zone)

Saabeth spent the last two years in the UK and has almost 350000km on the clock. While the Turbo-charged B202 2.0 litre FPT engine starts on first turn of the key – it definitely needs a bit of TLC. As my son let’s me use it as daily driver for the next couple months – I intend to fix a few things. Hopefully the trip back to Germany will work out fine.

Another thing that becomes apparent when walking and driving through Den Haag, is the much higher use of Electric cars in the Netherlands compared to Germany. Even though the only book I took along this weekend is Peter Burgess’ “How to Power Tune MGB 4-Cylinder Engines” – I couldn’t help but think about the (for some people controversial) topic of Classic Car Eletric conversions. The majority of buildings here is more than 50 years old. From the outside you can hardly tell but most of them have been renovated and modernized to current standards. I believe that the same can be done with classic cars.

While I do not intend to do this with the MGBs anytime soon – I do consider to do such a conversion on my Mini Cooper or another “city car” in future. By coincidence – we walked by a good candidate tonight…..