Thanks for the kind words fellas
To be honest, my experience of the Saabs were as stated above, the older ones were pretty classy motors, so when she mentioned the Saab, I wasn't too concerned.
The trouble is, that I didn't do my research properly, If I'd known that Saab was owned by GM and that the engine is the one devoloped by GM, Fiat, and Alfa Romeo, I wouldn't have gone near it. Basically, it's my silly fault for assuming that Saab is still a good name, sadly, allegedly, it no longer is
When we know for sure what her job situation really is, we may still go down the road of the 407, despite the alleged clutch problem, (it only does motorway miles anyway), personally, I would rather keep the 406, it has some cosmetic car park damage, but it's only done 90,000 motorway miles to work and back, we have never used it for long trips as we have the 4x4 7 seater.
I made the mistake with our previous car of thinking 111,000 miles was a lot for a Xantia when in fact it is nothing much at all, I seriously regret selling the Xantia, despite what a couple of people on here said, Xantias are very good cars in my personal experience.
Welly...the Astra is famous for breaking rear coil springs (fronts as well).Bottom ball joints are common failures, so are the inner track rod ends (rack side). Exhaust manifold gasket is a fairly simple job, the running problems are nearly always down to the EGR valve, but a good clean inside the throttle body does a world of good on those.
Plus the fact that nobody I have spoken to in the trade about the Saab, has a good word to say about them.
